Diffusive model to assess the release of chemicals from a material under intermittent release conditions

Abstract

We consider the archetype situation of a chemical species that diffuses in a material and irreversibly escapes through the interface. In our setup, the interface switches between two states corresponding to ‘release phase’ (absorbing boundary) during which the species is released to the exterior, and ‘pause phase’ (reflecting boundary) during which the species is not released and its concentration profile inside the material partially relaxes back to uniformity. By combining numerical solution of the diffusion equation and statistical analysis of the outcomes, we derive upper and lower bounds and an empirical approximation for the amount of species released up to a certain time, in which the only information about the release-pause alternation schedule is the number of release phases and the average duration of a release phase. The methodology is developed thinking especially to dermal exposure assessment in the case of a slab-like homogeneous material irreversibly releasing chemicals during a number of contacts. However, upon proper extensions, this approach might be useful for inspecting other situations that are encountered, for instance, when dealing with leakage of chemicals in environmental contexts and regulatory toxicology.

Shape dependence of the release rate of chemicals from plastic microparticles

“…3 presented later. A similar kind of strategy, i.e., making a systematic exploration as extensive as possible, is nowadays adopted in several contexts of physical statistics to make conjectures and discover new laws before formal proofs, and has been recently applied to the assessment of the release of chemicals from materials under intermittent conditions (Frezzato et al 2022).…”