Colorimetric Array Electronic Nose for Automotive Interior Material Odor Detection

Abstract

This study aims to detect the odor intensity levels of automotive adhesive tapes accurately, efficiently, and non-destructively. A 35-array colorimetric sensing test paper was developed using a polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) laminated test paper as the substrate and an acid-base solvent to detect the odor substances volatilized from the automotive interior materials. Detection experiments results show that the main odor substances volatilized from the automotive tape samples were aldehydes, ketones, acids, and ethers, changing colors at the relevant spots of the corresponding test paper. Hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA), principal component analysis (PCA), and partial least squares regression (PLSR) show that the colorimetric array test paper could accurately identify the different odor intensities of the automotive tape samples. To test the detection level of the colorimetric electronic nose on the odor intensity of other automotive tapes, a separate automotive tape sample prediction utilizes the electronic nose. All predicted odor intensity values of the separate automotive tape sample deviated by less than 0.4 from the subjective evaluation results and by less than 0.5 from the subjective evaluation results. Thus, the objective prediction model based on the colorimetric electronic nose can be used for detecting automotive adhesive tapes with different odor intensities.