Continuous Evaluation of Odour Concentration at a Plant Emission by Electronic Nose

Abstract

The development of an electronic nose for the continuous monitoring of odour emissions from an industrial plant would represent an important advantage in the field of environmental odour emissions control. For instance, it would allow to characterize odour emissions over time and use these data as real time input (data) for dispersion modelling purposes.
This study presents the first results of our research for the development of an electronic nose designed specifically for emission monitoring. The electronic nose EOS 507 was developed in collaboration with Sacmi s.c. and Progress S.r.l.
The emission chosen to test the electronic nose performances was a chimney for the emissions of the fumes produced by a plant for the disposal and treatment of hospital waste. A preliminary study was conducted in order to evaluate the instrument capability to quantify the odour concentration of pure compounds as well as of mixtures emitted by the monitored plant. An accurate instrument training was carried out in order to account for both the different operation phases of the plant and the variability of the conferred waste. The monitoring in the field involved the periodical collection of samples at the monitored emissions and their analysis by dynamic olfactometry, in order to verify the correctness of the electronic nose estimations.
The first results obtained seem to highlight that the electronic nose, if opportunely trained, is capable of estimating the odour concentration of the emission at a satisfying level of accuracy.