Barrier materials to reduce contaminant emissions from structural insulated panels

Publisher Summary The use of Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs) to create very tight building envelopes helps reducing the environmental impact and energy use of new housing. Typically, SIPs are constructed from oriented strand board (OSB) and rigid foam in multilayered sandwich-like structures. Although environmental and energy advantages make panelized systems very attractive, the tighter building envelopes may result in degraded indoor air quality. The potential release of volatile contaminants from SIPs must also be considered to ensure the reduced energy use. A physically based diffusion model that predicts emissions from a single layer of vinyl flooring has recently been developed and successfully validated. A logical extension of this approach is to apply the model to predict emissions from multilayer systems such as SIPs. A double-layer model is developed to predict the rate of mass transfer from double-layered building material to indoor air. It is assumed that the two layers are flat homogeneous slabs, that internal mass transfer is governed by diffusion, and that the indoor air is well mixed. An analytical solution to the double-layer model is presented and used to demonstrate the potential for a thin surface barrier layer to reduce contaminant emission rates from building materials.