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Simulation Program i-SVOC User’s Guide
Citation:
Guo, Z. Simulation Program i-SVOC User’s Guide. US Environmental Protection Agency, Cincinnati, OH, EPA/600/R-13/212, 2014.
Impact/Purpose:
This report is the User’s Guide for a dynamic modeling tool for indoor SVOCs. This tool calculates the movement and distribution of SVOCs in indoor media, including air, sources, sinks (i.e., sorption by interior surfaces), airborne particles, and settled dust. It supports OPPT, NCEA, and NERL’s effort to estimate indoor exposure to SVOCs. As a general-purpose simulation program, this tool is also useful to the general research community.
Description:
This document is the User’s Guide for computer program i-SVOC, which estimates the emissions, transport, and sorption of semivolatile organic compounds (SVOCs) in the indoor environment as a function of time when a series of initial conditions is given. This program implements a framework for dynamic modeling of indoor SVOCs developed by the author, and covers six indoor compartments: air (gas phase), air (particle phase), sources, sinks (i.e., sorption by interior surfaces), contaminant barriers, and settled dust. Potential applications of this program include: (1) It can be used as a stand-alone simulation program to obtain information that the current equilibrium models cannot provide, including evaluation of the effectiveness of certain pollution mitigation methods such as variable ventilation rates, source removal, and source encapsulation. (2) It can help reduce the uncertainties in the existing multimedia models. For instance, for the SVOCs with large particle-air partition coefficients, the instantaneous equilibrium assumption tends to overestimate the particle-phase SVOC concentrations in room air. This program can help estimate the degree of sorption saturation. (3) It can be used as a front-end component for stochastic exposure models to provide information about the SVOC distribution in indoor media in the absence of experimental data. This program is intended for advanced users, who are involved in and familiar with indoor environmental quality (IEQ) modeling and indoor exposure assessment. Dynamic modeling of SVOCs in indoor media is a relatively new research field, and a number of issues need to be resolved in future research.