Electronic Noses for the Qualitative and Quantitative Determination of Environmental Odours

Abstract

For odour impact assessment purposes it may be very useful to dispose of an instrument (electronic nose) capable of both qualifying and quantifying odours in ambient air. For this reason, in the last decade, at the Politecnico di Milano, in collaboration with Sacmi s.c. and Progress S.r.l., specific electronic noses for the continuous monitoring of environmental odours were developed. Since the first instrument developed (EOS 835), during the last years an innovative electronic nose was realized (EOS 507) with the aim of guaranteeing better performances on field. This paper reports the results of laboratory tests performed on different pure compounds, selected among compounds that are typical of environmental odour emissions, proving the capability of the new instrument EOS 507 of discriminating odours and to determine their concentrations up to very low odour concentration values (about 30ou_E/m³). Moreover, the two instruments (EOS 507 and EOS 835) were used on field, in order to verify their performances with real environmental odours.