The need for electronic noses for environmental odour exposure assessment

Abstract

This paper focuses on the opportunities for using electronic noses for odour exposure assessment purposes, especially in cases where dispersion modelling is not applicable. Such cases include, for instance, those sources where a detailed characterisation and quantification of the odour emissions for every hour of the simulation time domain is particularly difficult, due to the nature of the source or to the variability of the emissions over time. In such situations, it is useful to determine odour exposure directly at receptors instead. This paper critically discusses the state of the art of electronic nose technology as far as its application to the determination of odour exposure at receptors is concerned. One example of electronic nose application to the monitoring of odours from an Italian municipal solid waste (MSW) landfill is reported, in order to discuss the instrument's potential and limits. The monitoring results are represented by the number of measures that are classified in a specific olfactory class; this information allows the odour exposure at each monitoring site in terms of odour detection frequency to be determined. Besides a quantification of the odour episodes, electronic noses allowed the identification of the landfill gas as the monitored landfill major odour source.

A cluster analysis approach based on exploiting density peaks for gas discrimination with electronic noses in open environments

“…In the KmP algorithm, the classification threshold m D is a means to handle highly diluted, low concentration measurements, which are found to be hard to discriminate [2,27]. In our case, they are also problematic for data clustering with the R-L algorithm because these diluted measurements form up a dense overlapping area in the feature space.…”

Electronic Noses for Environmental Monitoring Applications

“…Electronic noses are an interesting and promising technology in the environmental field, both for odor impact assessment [ 120 , 121 ] or control [ 119 ] application purposes. Once opportunely trained, electronic noses can be used successfully for both detecting and identifying odors, by attributing the analyzed air to an olfactory class corresponding to a specific odor source.…”

Definition and Application of a Protocol for Electronic Nose Field Performance Testing: Example of Odor Monitoring from a Tire Storage Area

“…In such cases, the use of electronic noses or, more generally, Instrumental Odor Monitoring Systems (IOMS), may be particularly useful because of their capability of directly determining the odor impact at receptors (i.e., sensible neighborhood close to the plant) or at plant fencelines, without necessarily requiring a precise characterization of the odor source [10]. As a matter of fact, electronic noses currently represent the only method available for the continuous monitoring of odors in the field [11].…”

“…Another aspect that makes it impossible to apply a dispersion model in this case is related to the high variability of the emission sources over time, due to the continuous handling of tires. This variability constantly alters the emission scenario, especially for the outdoor odor sources, and can hardly be implemented in a dispersion model [10].…”