1,721,167 research outputs found
Evolution of electronic noses from research objects to engineered environmental odour monitoring systems: A review of standardization approaches
Full text linkSince electronic noses are used more and more for air quality monitoring purposes, and in some countries are starting to have a legal value, there is a need for standardization and programs for the quality verification of instruments. Such quality programs have the aim to guarantee the main characteristics of the instrument for both the final user and local authorities, let the user establish a suitable maintenance procedure and give information on measurement uncertainty. One critical aspect when dealing with electronic noses for environmental odour monitoring is that environmental odours are complex mixtures that are not repeatable nor reproducible, giving that they are not suitable for quality verifications. This paper aims to review and discuss the different approaches that can be adopted in order to perform quality checks on electronic noses (e-noses) used for environmental odour monitoring, thereby referring to existing technical standards, such as the Dutch NTA 9055:2012, the new German VDI 3518-3:2018, and the Italian UNI 1605848 project, which directly refer to electronic noses. Moreover, also the European technical standards that are prescriptive for automatic measuring systems (AMSs) are taken into consideration (i.e., EN 14181:2014 and EN 15267:2009), and their possible applicability to electronic noses is investigated. Finally, the pros and cons of the different approaches are presented and discussed in the conclusions section
Enhancement of intermediate mass dimuons in nucleus-nucleus collisions at the CERN-SPS
No full textDimuon production in p-A, S-U and Pb-Pb collisions at the CERN-SPS has been studied by the NA38/NA50 collaboration. A 4-D unfolding method has been applied to the data to study the intermediate mass region (IMR) between 1.6 and 2.5 GeV/c(2). The superposition of conventional processes, namely Drell-Yan and open charm, extrapolated from p-A distributions is unable to describe the overproduction observed in the ion data. Medium effects or D-meson rescattering cannot account for the experimental results. Two possible explanations of the observed excess, namely an enhancement of charm production or the presence of thermal dilepton radiation, are also discussed
A new methodology based on citizen science to improve environmental odour management
Full text linkThis paper outlines a new methodology to gather valid real time odour observations in the impact area of an odour emitting activity by using citizen science tools and a quadruple helix approach (Cavallini et al., 2016), to involve the public authorities, the odour emitting industries, the Academia and the citizens and co-design local solutions to reduce nuisance. The results of the proposed innovative bottom-up approach can contribute to identify improvements in the daily practice of the industries such us operations that cause peaks of emissions, or the critical times of the day that increase nuisance due to non-favourable meteorological conditions, while improving the relationships with the citizens and the local environmental authorities, as well as increasing transparency. In addition, the cost of traditional odour studies can be reduced since the real time odour observations gathered by the citizens have no associated costs
A Method to Evaluate Odour Impacts in the Case of Highly Variable Emission Scenarios: a Case Study in a Foundry
No full textOdour impact assessment can be a very complex issue for plants characterized by variable emissions associated to different operating conditions occurring with unpredictable frequencies. An example of this type of plants are foundries which, in general, are equipped to treat, transform and process a variety of raw materials in order to reach the required prerequisites of their final products (i.e., alloys). Thus, depending on the raw materials entering the plant, it could be necessary to change very often, even several times a day, the operating conditions of the plant, leading to a continuous variation of their emissions. In this context, the present work aims to describe a methodology to characterize such complex and variable emission scenario from an olfactory point of view. This case-study focuses on the evaluation of the odour impact assessment of a non-ferrous metal smelting and alloying plant whose odorous emissions demonstrated to strongly differ from each other depending on the processing phase and type of raw materials used. Firstly, several olfactometric campaigns were carried out in different seasons and considering different operating conditions. By analysing the odour concentration values by means of a one-way ANOVA test, two “macro-classes” of operating conditions characterized by statistically different odour emissions were identified: “Low” odour condition and “High” odour condition. Then, a randomized dispersion model was developed to simulate the variability of emissions of the plant through a statistical approach implementing a specific MATLAB® function to randomly distribute the occurrence of the higher-emission conditions over the year. Finally, 6 different scenarios have been simulated by CALPUFF and the results obtained have been compared and evaluated, proving the importance of investigating the model sensitivity towards the choice of the hours in which the higher-emissions conditions occur
Implementation of an Instrumental Odour Monitoring System (IOMS) with variable thresholds to predict citizens' odour perceptions
No full textThe use of Instrumental Odour Monitoring Systems (IOMS) to monitor odours at plant fencelines is becoming more and more interesting. Indeed, in Italy, IOMS are currently frequently prescribed at waste treatment facilities with the purpose of continuously monitoring odour emission and produce alarms when a given threshold is exceeded. In this context, a possible improvement concerns the implementation of variable alarm thresholds, which change as a function of the local meteorological conditions, and result in a better correlation with odour perceptions at receptors. This paper presents the implementation of such a monitoring system applied to a landfill, proving its capability to increase the correspondence between threshold exceedances and odour events at receptors, thus paving the way for the development of a system capable in assisting plant managers to promptly identify critical situations and plan immediate interventions to reduce odour impacts
Odour impact assessment by Instrumental Odour Monitoring Systems: A case study focusing on the differentiation of different odour sources and performance testing
No full textThe assessment of the odour impact associated to industrial activities represent one of the most interesting applications of Instrumental Odour Monitoring Systems (IOMS). Thanks to their capability of qualifying ambient air, IOMS can be effectively applied for the air quality monitoring directly where citizens complain about the presence of odours, i.e., the receptor. This paper describes the IOMS monitoring of a complex plant comprising a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) and a plant for the storage, selection and pre-treatment of municipal and special wastes (WTP), focusing on the procedure used to train the IOMS and validate its detections
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