The emission characteristic parameters of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from paints are the initial
concentration, the diffusion coefficient and the paint/air partition coefficient. It is necessary to determine
these parameters for fully understanding the emission behaviors as well as for source control. Based on
detailed mass transfer analysis of VOC emissions from paints, a novel method is developed to measure
these parameters, which owns the following merits: (1) the diffusion coefficient and partition coefficient
can be simultaneously determined; (2) it takes less than 12 h for the cases studied and indicates high
measurement accuracy (R2 in the range of 0.921e0.939). Ventilated chamber experiments are performed
to obtain the two parameters of methylcyclohexane and toluene emissions from one kind of solventbased
paint. The effectiveness of the method is verified by the good agreement between model predictions
based on the determined characteristic parameters and experiments. The present approach is
then applied to analyze the experimental data in the literature, and good results are also obtained, which
further demonstrates that the approach is convincing and reliable. Our new approach should prove
useful for rapid prediction and characterization of VOC emissions from paints as well as from other wet
materials.