ニオイの重要性と木材の焦げ臭について

Abstract

Odor perception is the only one of our five senses and reaches beyond the time and space. In the ancient times odor was used more often in order to discriminate, foreknow and avoid the existing danger. However, the civilized life style has taken away the original sharpness of our five senses. We surveyed the nature and explained the usefulness of the active odor recognition like the river selection by odor in salmon case. Odor perception enables creatures to sense the outer world, for example, sniffing the future world of the emerging danger and the past world by tracking the trace of bait for their survival. We examined the burn smell of wood as an example of the present odor detection. The decomposition products of cellulose and perfume of the wood were generated when the wood was heated and pyrolized. In the case of wood, the detection temperature of the smell of burnt levoglucosan was observed from 200°C, a low temperature as compared with 300°C in the case of cellulose. When levoglucosan was diluted in the hot decomposition products of wood, the adsorbed amount of levoglucosan at the cold point in column decreased and levoglucosan was detected at a lower temperature.