System for dosing formaldehyde vapor at the ppb level

Formaldehyde is one of the most relevant compounds for indoor air pollution. It is toxic, allergenic and carcinogenic and acts already at the ppb level. State-of-the-art detection methods are based on the wet chemical analysis of formaldehyde derivates. This is a complex and time-consuming approach and hinders the collection of real-time data. However, the use of wet chemistry allows for the simple calibration based on formalin solutions. By using gas sensors, online monitoring of indoor air quality is, in principle, possible. To find out whether their performance is good enough, calibration is the first issue to be resolved. Formaldehyde vapor at low concentrations has to be used, and temperature, humidity and flow rate have to be kept constant. This paper discusses the different possibilities of dosing formaldehyde and how to better meet the gas sensor calibration demands. The authors favor the use of an aqueous formaldehyde solution obtained by the depolymerization of paraformaldehyde in combination with a permeation tube used as external reference. Moreover, in the paper it is demonstrated that metal oxide sensors are appropriate detectors to calibrate the system for concentrations even down to 20 ppb. Consequently, the presented system is able to characterize gas sensors and can be used for the development of new devices which monitor indoor air quality.