Abstract
E-nose applications have been developed for last twenty years for both quality monitoring of industrial processes and measurement in the environment for air pollution. In the first case, calibration is quite easy and measurements are compared to a reference fingerprint. For air pollution studies and especially for odour concentration estimation, the relationship between sensor responses and odour is not obvious. This presentation deals with limitation of e-noses linked to sampling location, calibration procedure, external conditions and instability of studied sources in order to integrate all drawbacks that potentially impact the result. E-noses are very useful tools but unfortunately, they cannot be efficient in all conditions and users must know this aspect. Of course, potentialities are linked to technologies such as metallic oxides, conducting polymer, micro-balance, electrochemical sensors…
New technologies are still in development to offer more sensitivity or more selectivity and if actual limitations are strong for environmental analysis, we can imagine a better situation for the future with typically specific monitoring. In order to improve potential use instrumental odour monitoring including sensors or e-noses, a new working group (WG41) started in 2015 in the frame of CEN/TC264 Air Quality. The objective of this group is to propose a new European standard on this topic: Instrumental odour monitoring. The present paper deals with one aspect of this monitoring approach looking at sensor (e-nose) use for environmental analysis and limitations observed for such an application.
