Combining of TD-GC-MS and home developed electronic nose for road traffic air monitoring

Abstract

In this work, we demonstrate the ability of an electronic nose system based on an array of six-semiconductor gas sensors for outdoor air quality monitoring over a day at a traffic road in downtown of Meknes city (Morocco). The response of the sensor array reaches its maximum in the evening of the investigated day which may due to high vehicular traffic or/and human habits resulting in elevated concentrations of pollutants. Dataset treatment by Principal Component Analysis and Discriminant Function Analysis shows a good discrimination between samples collected at different times of the day. Moreover, Support Vector Machines were used and reached a classification success rate of 97.5 %. Thermal Desorption-Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (TD-GC-MS) technique was used to validate the developed e-nose system by identifying the composition of the analyzed air samples. The discrimination obtained by e-nose system was in good agreement with the TD-GC-MS results. This study demonstrates the usefulness of TD-GC-MS and e-nose, providing high accuracy in discriminating outdoor air samples collected at different times. This demonstrates the potential of using the e-nose as a rapid, easy to use and inexpensive environmental monitoring system.