An electronic nose for odour annoyance assessment

Although in most cases annoying atmospheric emissions do not menace public health, they are less and less tolerated because of the effects on quality of life. Several approaches have been proposed to face this problem but none of them offers a completely satisfying solution. The development of electronic noses, which promise to mimic human sense of smell by means of a sensor array and a pattern recognition model, offers new interesting perspectives. In this paper, an electronic nose based on conducting polymer sensors and a fuzzy logic-based pattern recognition system is tested with waste water samples, obtaining 87% recognition rate on the test set. Current limits of this new technology are discussed and a strategy for their overcoming is proposed. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.