Abstract
The presence of volatile organic compounds, which affects indoor air quality, is considered to be responsible for a number of health problems. As noted in the literature, the zeolite 13X has good surface properties to adsorb several types of VOCs. Therefore, a series of dynamic measurements of the adsorption of volatile methyl, ethyl, and iso-propyl acetates onto zeolite 13X were conducted in this self-designed apparatus. Instead of using a traditional gas chromatograph, the breakthrough curves for these volatile organic compounds (VOCs) onto zeolite 13X were measured by using a gas phase Fourier Transformation-IR (FT-IR) spectrometer, which responds more quickly to instantaneous changes in the gas concentration. The adsorption experiments were carried out at three different feed concentrations and three gas flow rates for each type of acetate. A significant influence of the breakthrough time on the changes of concentration and flow rate was observed. An empirical model proposed by Yoon and Nelson was applied to fit the experimental data and compared with the application in the authors’ previous study. The results showed that the model can fit the experimental data well under various operating conditions and that the standard deviation values are small.
