Evaluation of unpleasant odor with a portable electronic nose

An intelligent multi-sensor system with an entire autonomy, a low weight and a small size has been developed for in situ applications such as environmental pollutant gas detection or olfactory estimation. This portable electronic nose works with commercial metal oxide gas sensors and a microcontroller connected to a compact flash memory as intelligent unit. In this work we present the conception of this electronic nose, its laboratory validation, and a real application which concerns an outdoor air monitoring of a duck breeding. This application is developed in order to quantify continuously discomfort odor spread, causing neighbor complaints. The odor measurements were made using our electronic nose (Nepo) and results are compared to the simultaneous results obtained from other olfactometric techniques. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V All rights reserved.