Electronic noses for the real time assessment of odour concentration: example of the monitoring of odour emissions from a landfill

Electronic noses currently represent the only tool available for the continuous monitoring of odours, enabling the direct assessment of the odour impact, even in case of complex odour sources. An interesting development perspective of IOMS is real-time process monitoring. For this purpose, the IOMS must provide a continuous, fast and accurate measurement of the odour concentration. The approach that is currently used for odour quantification by IOMS involves the construction of simplified regression models, which do not consider the odour class previous to regression. Consequently, such models are often ineffective: IOMS responses to odorous samples having the same concentration, but representative of different sources, may differ significantly. The present work describes a case study regarding the application of two IOMS to the monitoring of odours from a landfill. The work focuses on the development of a new approach for the estimation of odour concentration by IOMS at the plant fenceline, based on the construction of specific regression models for the various landfill odour sources, and describes the experimental protocol involved for e-nose training and performance verification in the field.