Porous silica spheres as indoor air pollutant scavengers

Delaney, Paul and Healy, Robert and Hanrahan, John P. and Gibson, Lorraine and Wenger, John C. and Morris, Michael A. and Holmes, Justin D. (2010) Porous silica spheres as indoor air pollutant scavengers. Journal of Environmental Monitoring, 12 (12). pp. 2244-2251. ISSN 1464-0325 (https://doi.org/10.1039/c0em00226g)

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Abstract

Porous silica spheres were investigated for their effectiveness in removing typical indoor air pollutants, such as aromatic and carbonyl-containing volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and compared to the commercially available polymer styrene-divinylbenzene (XAD-4). The silica spheres and the XAD-4 resin were coated on denuder sampling devices and their adsorption efficiencies for volatile organic compounds evaluated using an indoor air simulation chamber. Real indoor sampling was also undertaken to evaluate the affinity of the silica adsorbents for a variety of indoor VOCs. The silica sphere adsorbents were found to have a high affinity for polar carbonyls and found to be more efficient than the XAD-4 resin at adsorbing carbonyls in an indoor environment.