Abstract
Online measurement techniques of airborne organic compounds have been greatly improved over the past several decades, and they are increasingly applied to indoor air research. Some instruments are designed to accurately measure a specific organic pollutant. Herein we review online measurement techniques for formaldehyde and highlight two recently developed portable devices that are accurate enough for indoor applications. Other instruments can measure many organic compounds simultaneously. The available techniques can be classified into two categories: chemical ionization mass spectrometry (CIMS) and automated gas chromatography (GC) systems. CIMS has high sensitivity and fast response, but often has limited chemical specificity. There are about ten types of CIMS available, among which proton transfer reaction mass spectrometry (PTR-MS) is most widely used and can measure a large variety of volatile organic compounds. GC-based instruments can have better chemical specificity than CIMS, but the time resolution is lower. Herein we describe operation principles of common CIMS and GC-based instruments, and summarize how these instruments have been applied for indoor air monitoring to gain new insights about the dynamics, emission, chemistry, and exposure of indoor organic compounds. The limited number of indoor applications using these online instruments already demonstrate the great potential of these new tools to advance our understanding of indoor organic chemicals.
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Liu, Y., Mo, J. (2022). Real-Time Monitoring of Indoor Organic Compounds. In: Zhang, Y., Hopke, P.K., Mandin, C. (eds) Handbook of Indoor Air Quality. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7680-2_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7680-2_18
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