title: Development of an electronic nose for environmental  odour monitoring.
abstract: Exhaustive odour impact assessment should involve the evaluation of the impact of odours directly on citizens. For this purpose it might be useful to have an instrument capable of continuously monitoring ambient air quality, detecting the presence of odours and also recognizing their provenance. This paper discusses the laboratory and field  tests conducted in order to evaluate the performance of a new electronic nose, specifically developed for monitoring environmental odours. The laboratory tests proved the instrument was able to discriminate between the different pure substances being tested, and to estimate the odour concentrations giving correlation indexes (R2) of 0.99 and errors below 15%. Finally, the experimental monitoring tests conducted in the field, allowed us to verify the effectiveness of this electronic nose for the continuous detection of odours in ambient air, proving its stability to variable atmospheric conditions and its capability to detect odour peaks.
authors.affiliation: Politecnico di Milano, Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering Giulio Natta, 20133 Milano, Italy. ldentoni@chem.polimi.it
authors.forename: Licinia
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Dentoni
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Capelli
authors.forename: Selena
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sironi
authors.forename: Renato
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Del Rosso
authors.forename: Sonia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zanetti
authors.forename: Matteo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Della Torre
mesh_terms: D004581:Electronics; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000295:instrumentation*; D009812:Odorants