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Can carbon dioxide be a good indicator for formaldehyde in residences?—Monte Carlo modeling for a whole year

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journal contribution
posted on 2020-03-03, 06:06 authored by Weihui Liang, Bin Zhao, Junjie Liu, Jingjing Pei

Indoor air quality (IAQ) plays a significant role in human health, and CO2 has a long history of use as an IAQ indicator. Formaldehyde is one of the most ubiquitous indoor pollutants with proven adverse health effects. However, formaldehyde sensors are generally expensive, and they are not as accurate as CO2 sensors. Thus, it is important to determine whether CO2 could be used as an indicator for formaldehyde in engineering applications. In this study, indoor CO2 and formaldehyde concentrations in actual Chinese residences under natural and mechanical ventilation were simulated by the Monte Carlo method. The Pearson correlation analyses were also performed. It was found that when emission rate of CO2 is constant, CO2 can act as a good indicator for formaldehyde when the formaldehyde emission rate (mg/h) divided by the emission rate of CO2 (L/h) is smaller than 0.14 and positive correlation occurred between them. However, when the emission rate of CO2 is varied, CO2 may not be used as an indicator for formaldehyde despite their positive correlation.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant number 51708277 and 51678287, and Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province under Grant number BK20170646.

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