Application of conducting polymer odour sensing arrays to malodour monitoring

Conducting polymer sensor arrays are becoming very powerful tools in a wide variety of odour measurement applications. We have developed an analytical odour sensing device that is capable of sensing some of the malodorous compounds with low olfactory thresholds to the human nose. In testing against chemical components present in pig slurry, we found that the response to individual components was proportional to concentration, though the relationship was nonlinear. Many of the individual components are discriminated from each other, when presented singly to the sensor array. The sensors are not poisoned by the chemicals and give reproducible responses over a long period. The system was used to measure the odour emitted from fresh pig slurry, and a correlation was done with a human panel for assessment of odour intensity