Have you ever walked into a room only to be met with an overpowering scent wafting through the air? Not only can odors affect how you perceive your surroundings, they play a role in your productivity, performance, mood and even your health. A room’s occupants judge the quality of the air not just by how it feels (temperature and humidity), but also by how it smells. Unfortunately, odors in offices, kitchens, gymnasiums and restrooms, for example, do not alter CO2 levels measured by most indoor air quality monitors.
As indoor air quality monitoring technology has become more sophisticated, it is now possible to detect the presence of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as acetone, heptane and many other metabolic products in human breath in addition to formaldehyde, cooking odors, human bio-effluents, outdoor pollutants, paints and lacquers, cleaning supplies, and toxins. Here’s a quick list of VOCs and their sources:
| Figure 1 – Examples of VOCs and Sources Substance Group | Example | Sources |
| Alcohols | alcohol, mineral spirits | cleaning supplies |
| Aldehydes | formaldehyde | building materials |
| Ketones | butanone | Paints |
| Esters | methyl acetate | Glues |
| Terpenes | pinene | Glues |
| Aromatics | xylol | paints and glues |
| Alkanes | heptane | human breath |
While today’s building owners and managers are diligent about reducing energy costs and utilizing sustainable materials, they often overlook the quality of the facility’s indoor air. Considering that contaminated air not only poses health risks to occupants, but also lowers productivity and comfort, indoor air monitors capable of detecting the presence of harmful VOCs are becoming more prevalent.
Some indoor air monitors use motion, light and heat detectors to signal the operation of ventilation systems. While those monitors may help maintain optimum temperatures, they cannot detect the odor of a tuna sandwich left in a desk drawer over the weekend, or cigarette smoke in someone’s clothes, etc. By detecting odors and other pollutants, VOC sensors optimize proper ventilation to ensure the highest air quality for occupants and reduce utility costs for building owners.
Over a period of several years, AppliedSensor monitored the performance of indoor air quality sensors installed in various locations including offices, cafeterias, schools, production facilities, apartments and homes. In one installation, an iAQ module is integrated in the air handling unit in a gymnasium to monitor the quality of the facility’s air and control the speed of the air handling unit’s fan. Want to know what happened after switching to demand-controlled ventilation? We’ll give you a hint – it affected both energy consumption and operating time. Here are the details.