Chapter 12 Application of electronic nose technology for monitoring water and wastewater

Abstract

This chapter reviews electronic nose sensor technology and instrumentation, data-processing techniques, and discusses the current status of integrating this non-specific sensing technology into water and wastewater monitoring systems. Electronic noses are analytical instruments that can characterise an odour without reference to its chemical composition. A variety of sensor technologies is employed in electronic nose systems, the most common of these being metal oxide sensors (MOS), conducting polymers (CP), surface acoustic wave devices (SAW), and quartz crystal microbalances (QCM), all of which are shown. The analysis of electronic nose data is dependent on the amount and nature of information available and the type of information required from the analysis (i.e. quantitative or qualitative). The principal components of an electronic nose instrument are its sample delivery system and the sensor array module. Applications of electronic nose technology have evolved from the food and beverage industries. The analysis of raw and treated water samples, tainted with trace concentrations of geosmin, methylisoborneol, 2-chlorophenol, phenol, diesel, and 2-chloro-6-methylphenol has demonstrated that an electronic nose can clearly separate tainted and untainted water samples (i.e. no overlapping occurs between the sample groups).