The floor covering adhesives have been deeply modified during the years. The first major development was the formulation of polymer-based products in aqueous dispersion as an alternative to organic solvents. To minimize both indoor and outdoor pollution, Mapei went further on formulating solvent-free adhesives with very low potential emissions even in the long term. Developing these adhesives required the parallel development of methods for monitoring and analyzing the formulations' emissions over time. A laboratory "environmental test chamber" was built for the purpose. Adhesive is placed on glass plates that are inserted into the test chamber. A stream of air is forced through the chamber and all the volatile organic compounds are collected and analyzed by means of gas-mass chromatography. A thorough analysis of the large quantity of results made it possible to establish a bi-logarithmic correlation of emissions vs. time from which the overall emission behavior from the 24-, 48- and 240-hours measurements can be predicted in sufficient approximation.
