Performances of a bitumen fume and condensate generation system fo sampling method development

The NIOSH 5042 method for the exposure assessment to the bitumen fumes during road paving or roofing operation has to be improved in order to take into account the vapour phase and to substitute benzene that is used as extraction solvant. A laboratory system was designed to generate bitumen fumes and to expose samplers in a homogenised chamber. Furthermore, the system was also design to condensate the fumes, having the form of oil that could be used as a standard for further analytical method development. The laboratory system was evaluated in term of stability, repeatability, aging, and ranges, focusing on the quality and quantity of the fumes and the physical characteristics of the fumes. The fumes generated with the laboratory system were also compared to fumes emitted at workplaces for representativeness evaluation. Results demonstrated that the laboratory generation was stable and repeatable. Humidity could range from 20 to 80 % RH and the total fume concentration ranged from 0.01 to 9.36 mg.m-3, covering the conditions encountered for road paving workplaces. Fumes generated in laboratory were found to be similar to the one from workplaces with slight differences on light compounds equivalent to C12 and below n-alkanes. Thus, the system design in this study is considered able to generate bitumen fumes for sampling and analysing method development.