Electronic nose – an instrument for odour nuisances monitoring

Abstract

An increasingly frequent problem of people living in urban agglomerations is the occurrence of odour nuisance. Although the source of these nuisances is different, their common feature is that they are a complex mixture of odour compounds with different odour thresholds. However, from a practical point of view, the most valuable would be a direct link between the odour intensity and the results of on-line analytical air monitoring. Such a possibility is created by the use of electronic noses (devices that are supposed to imitate the human sense of smell) to measure odours. The paper presents the use of an electronic nose combined with multiple liear regression model (MLR) to determine the odour intensity of the two-component mixture samples of commonly known odour compounds: trimethylamine (TMA) and triethylamine (TEA) in concentration range 50–200 ppm v/v. The obtained results were compared with the theoretical values determined using Zwaardemaker and euclidean additivity (EA) models. For high concentrations of substances in the mixtures (> 150 ppm v/v), the masking effect was observed.