A Theoretical Study of the Effect of Humidity on Respirator Cartridge Service Life

The modification and further development of a previously introduced theoretical model has been reported; the original model was designed to address respirator cartridge contaminant breakthrough problems. The previous theory was capable of generating only symmetrical, sigmoidal contaminant breakthrough curves. In this study nonsymmetrical breakthrough curves are addressed. The modification of the theory involves the introduction of a simple, linear, time-dependent expression for the saturation capacity of the respirator cartridge sorbent bed. The modified expression includes three theoretical parameters: k″, τ and Wa. The theoretical approach introduced assesses the effect (on contaminant breakthrough) of the relative humidity of both the ambient environment in which the respirator cartridge is used and the specific environment utilized to precondition the cartridge. With a single mathematical expression, it is possible to generate valid theoretical contaminant breakthrough curves for a wide range of envir...