Electronic Nose for environmental monitoring jointly developed by CSIR-NEERI & C-DAC

An Electronic Nose (E-Nose) was jointly developed by Nagpur-based National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) of CSIR and Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC). The development was announced by CSIR-NEERI and C-DAC on 8 July 2015.

E-Nose technology will help monitor the surrounding environment to sniff out dangerous gases.

Key Features of E-Nose

• It is a portable device and measures odour concentration as well as odour intensity.
• It uses an array of sensors that function on the principle similar to that of human olfaction (sense of smell). The sensor array generates a pattern based on the type of aroma.
• It is possible to train the software by feeding information based on observation of experts.
• It is the first of its kind of technology to be developed in India that makes use of intelligent software to identify odorous molecules.

Utility of E-nose

• It can help sniff out a variety of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and odorants at a pulp and paper mill industry with a prime objective to protect the health of thousands of workers working in this industry.
• The pulp and paper industry emits a variety of gases, namely, hydrogen sulphide, methyl mercaptan, dimethyl sulphide, and dimethyl disulphide all of which beyond a certain concentrations may adversely affect the environment and human health.
• It helps in continuous monitoring of these gases, overcoming all limitations of the available analytical instruments that are not only expensive and time-consuming.
• It also establishes a correlation between sensory and analytical measurements for the sulphurous odorants generated from pulp and paper industries, tanneries and distilleries.
• It can be easily operated at a pulp and paper mill industry and is currently functioning successfully at the Mysore Paper Mills Limited at Bhadravathi in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu Paper Mill.  
• The researchers are currently working on the application of Electronic Nose to monitor gas emissions from any source, be it an industry or leakage of petroleum pipes going through fields or farms.

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