Vinyl chloride monomer exists as gas phase at normal temperature and reacts with oxygen and strong oxidant in the air to form oxidized materials. Because of being easily synthesized, it is used as a main source at the synthetic reaction process of PVC synthesis factories. Ministry of Labor regulates its usage as a carcinogen and its exposure level as 1 ppm. But the amount of VCM production in PVC and VCM production process hasn´t been exactly estimated. In addition, facilities of this factory are located in outdoor. Therefore, this study was designed to investigate effects of temperature on breakthrough of charcoal tube at a fixed concentration and temperature during VCM sampling based on NIOSH and OSHA methods which were used as methods of occupational environment measuring and analysis.
During the sampling of VCM, methods of OSHA and NIOSH require flow rate of 0.05 lpm and sampling volume of 3ℓ, 5ℓ respectively, at this time carbon molecular sieve tube and coconut shell charcoal tube are used to observe the breakthrough along with concentration and temperature. As a result, significant difference between average adsorbed amounts of OSHA methods but that of NIOSH methods cannot be found.
NIOSH method is likely to be effected by high temperature and normal temperature in high concentration. Breakthrough is not found in the method of OSHA at different conditions of temperature and concentration.
As the result of this study we could verify that breakthrough occurred in the process of sampling VCM with NIOSH methods. Therefor in summer time, breakthrough should be considered and research on the breakthrough volume should be done. It is considered the research about the specificity of the coconut shell charcoal and carbon molecular sieve sorbent should be done when sampling VCM in coming days.
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