Development of an E-Nose Using Metal Oxide Semiconductor Sensors for the Classification of Climacteric Fruits

Abstract

The present work deals with the development of an artificial olfactory system as a nondestructive instrument to be used for classification of different fruits and exploration of its application in measurement of fruit ripening stages. The fruits chosen for this study are Guava, Orange and Banana. The developed system comprises of an array of eight metal oxide semiconductor gas sensors, odor delivery system, interface circuit board, data acquisition card and self programmed Data acquisition as well as analysis software using LabVIEW. The design of this tool focused on studying the response of a sensor array to various VOC vapors released by fruit during ripening and optimizing the data acquisition, signal preprocessing, storage, feature extraction parameters using principle component analysis. It was found that developed e-nose can discriminate the patterns of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from three fruits taken for experimentation. These three fruits, as analysed by the principal component analysis (PCA). With further validation and development, this e-nose may become very useful for monitoring the exhaled as a screening device for discriminating the fruits. This e-nose can also be used for classification and grading of different climacteric fruits on the basis of their ripening stages.