IONICON blog

VOC emissions in our homes, offices or cars – an exemplary study of commercial air fresheners

Volatile Organic Compouns (VOCs) are chemicals that vaporize at room temperature and many of which are known to be harmful to our health or have a bad smell. Nearly every commercial product we use emits VOCs, some of them on purpose (e.g. air fresheners) but a lot of them unintentionally (e.g. furniture like carpets or paints).

Regulations exist to keep the level of VOC emissions low as many people react irritated to some of the substances. The so called ”Sick Building Syndrome” is a situation where according to the US EPA “…Building occupants complain of symptoms associated with acute discomfort…”.  ”Chemical contaminants from indoor sources” is cited as one of the “contributing factors to sick building syndrom”.

IONICON PTR-MS is often used for real-time quantification of trace VOCs in our outdoor environment, but also indoors. PTR-MS allows for straightforward, immediate analysis of air without any complicate sample preparation providing real-time results as mass spectra. Therefore many customers use PTR-MS for applications including:

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The “Emissions and odours from materials” conference took place in Brussels from October 13-14, 2010.

PTR-MS is an ideal and versatile technology for the real-time quantification of VOCs in very low concentrations (sub pptv-range). This is the reason why PTR-MS is used e.g. in a product called the AMC-Monitor C-1000 for monitoring of critical compounds in the semiconductor industry. PTR-MS is also used in different studies of the air quality in simulated and real flight situations.

We held a talk about the PTR-MS technology, instrumentation, new developments and presented some application examples to the attendees of this two-days event. The main focus lay on VOCs emissions from materials in indoor air and controlled environments such as cleanrooms.

The participants were predominately specialists from the industry and scientists from academic institutions and had the chance to test PTR-MS themselves when visiting our exhibition corner.

Have a look at the program and download our slides here!

Real-Time Parallel Detection of Multiple VOC Contamination in Air

We, in this case artemis control AG, Switzerland being our exclusive partner and IONICON, are proud to present the new AMC-Monitor to you:

The AMC-Monitor C-1000 is the first on-line and real-time equipment capable to monitor various organic constituents in parallel in gas and air.

Developped jointly in a cooperative project together with artemis control,  the AMC-Monitor C-1000 is establishing a new standard in the detection of dynamic contamination levels in process environments.
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