• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
• /
• v.25 no.6
• /
• pp.523-538
• /
• 2009

Recently, there has been a keen demand for real-time automatic monitoring of VOCs not only in Korea but other developed countries. We carried out this study to evaluate and to optimize the performance of a continuous automatic monitoring system for hazardous VOCs (HVOCs) in the ambient atmosphere, using an on-line GC system. The online system normally consisted of a Nafion dryer prior to a cold trap of an automatic thermal desorption apparatus and a GC system equipped with two detectors, i.e. PID and ECD. Preliminary tests conducted to check out any contamination of the system revealed an evidence of significant artifact formation of benzene, and it was found that the Nafion dryer (even brand new one) is the source of the benzene artifact. Thus, all the subsequent experiments in this study was carried out inevitably by removing the Nafion dryer. The on-line GC method was investigated with a variety of QC/QA performance criteria such as repeatability, linearity, lower detection limits, and accuracy. In order to find out the best operating condition for the on-line GC system, three different types (in terms of adsorption strength) of cold trap combinations were tested, i.e. (i) Tenax-TA and Carbopack-B combination (weak and hydrophobic); (ii) Tenax-TA, Carbopack-X and Carboxen-1000 combination (strong and hydrophilic); and (iii) Tenax-TA and Carbopack-X combination (medium and hydrophobic/hydrophilic). The USEPA TO-17 manual method was selected as a reference method to evaluate the performance of the on-line method. A series of experiments revealed that the system performance was superior to others when a cold trap packed with hydrophilic adsorbents (Tenax-TA/Carbopack-X/Carboxen-1000 combination) was used and operated at $25^{\circ}C$. However, the system with a cold trap packed with a combination of Tenax-TA and Carbopack-X is more recommended for field applications since the carboxen-1000 adsorbent is too sensitive to water vapor, and hence the performance of the system might be very unstable to humid samples or during rainy days. Furthermore, the precision and accuracy criteria of the Tenax-TA/ Carbopack-X combination were generally compatible with the triple adsorbents cold trap. The continuous automatic monitoring method is, thus, considered very useful to real-time monitoring to understand the variations of VOCs concentrations in ambient air, as it adopts much simpler procedures in sampling, analysis, and data integration steps than manual monitoring methods. However, it should be noted that there is a high possibility of benzene artifacts formation through the Nafion dryer, which is often installed to remove water vapor in air samples before being adsorbed onto the cold trap. Therefore, if a Nafion dryer is used in any studies of monitoring VOCs, the benzene contamination should be carefully examined before carrying out obtaining the data.

• Environmental Engineering Research
• /
• v.7 no.3
• /
• pp.177-184
• /
• 2002

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
• /
• v.27 no.6
• /
• pp.734-745
• /
• 2011

In this article, we reviewed the monitoring status of hazardous VOC in ambinet air in Korea and some developed countries such as USA, Japan, and UK. In many countries, two types of VOC monitoring stations are being operated, i.e., for hazardous VOC and photochemical VOC. Each country has different target VOC but all includes benzene. Korea, Japan, and UK have a national ambient air quality standard for benzene, but no national standard has been established in the USA. For sampling of the hazardous VOC, the adsorbent method is adopted in Korea and UK, while the canister method is used in the USA. Both of adsorbent and canister methods are used in Japan. USA and UK have only non-automatic method to measure the hazardous VOC, and the individual samples are being sent to their national laboratories for integrated analysis. On the other hand, Korea and Japan have automatic and nonautomatic methods to measure the hazardous VOC. Local governments or regional environmental agencies in Korea and Japan have the authorization for the sampling and analysis of VOC. According to a field study to evaluate the performance of automatic VOC monitoring system, controlling the moisture in the air sample was identified as the most important problem. However, careful attention must be given to using a moisture removing device such as Nafyon dryer, because of unexpected artifacts formation. In order to have reliable data, it is highly recommended not only to use internal standards, but to use appropriate hydrophobic adsorbents as a cold trap in any automatic on-line VOC monitoring system.