Abstract
Odour emissions generated by industrial and environmental protection plants are often a cause of nuisances and consequent conflicts in exposed populations. Their control is a key action to avoid complaints. Among the odour measurement techniques, the sensory-instrumental method with the application of Instrumental Odour Monitoring Systems (IOMSs) currently represents an effective solution to allow a continuous classification and quantification of odours in real time, combining the advantages of conventional analytical and sensorial techniques. However, some aspects still need to be improved. The study presents and discusses the investigation and optimization of the operational phases of an advanced IOMS, applied for monitoring of environmental odours, with the aim of increasing their performances and reliability of the measures. Accuracy rates of over 98% were reached in terms of classification performances. The implementation of automatic correction systems for the resistance values of the measurement sensors, by considering the influence of the temperature, has been proven to be a solution to further improve the reliability of IOMS. The proposed approach was based on the application of corrective coefficients experimentally determined by analyzing the correlation between resistance values and operating conditions. The paper provides useful information for the implementation of real-time management activities by using a tailor-made software, able to increase and enlarge the IOMS fields of application.
Highlights
The operation of industrial plants and of waste and wastewater treatment plants may entail the alteration of some environmental components, such as the air quality sector, with introduction into atmosphere of gaseous pollutants, including odours [1]
Results show that the samples misclassified resulted in the same both for the Training Set (TS) and TS + Validation Set (VS) dataset, while the correct classification rate resulted in being equal to 92.5%
The temperature of the gaseous flux in the measurement chamber was highlighted as an important variable to be monitored continuously, given their influence on the values detected by the Instrumental Odour Monitoring Systems (IOMSs) sensors
Summary
The operation of industrial plants and of waste and wastewater treatment plants may entail the alteration of some environmental components, such as the air quality sector, with introduction into atmosphere of gaseous pollutants, including odours [1]. Even if it is difficult to implement at an industrial scale, synergistic approaches based on chemical characterization, dynamic olfactometry, and electronic noses have been demonstrated to have the best performances to characterize odors, evaluate their concentration and to develop innovative and tailored monitoring systems [30]. With these approaches, it is possible to integrate and validate the monitoring results obtained with IOMS with a comprehensive point of view [31,32].
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