RESEARCH REGARDING THE ADHESIVE WITH VERY LOW EMISSIONS OF VOLATILE ORGANIC COMPOUNDS
IONIŢÄ‚ IRINA, CIOBANU DOMNICA, TULBURE MONICA
UNIVERSITY OF BACĂU, UNIVERSITY OF IAŞI,
Abstract
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.