Applications of Machine Olfaction - The Electronic Nose Artificial Olfaction Technology - page 205

The sense of smell plays a key role in human development and biosocial interac-
tions. In the development of many commercial industries, managing aroma properties
to improve product appeal, quality, and consistency by individual brands classification
is done by users having unique scents. Hence it is an essential requirement of the
olfactory sense. From wines and cuisine, perfumes and colognes added to personal
healthcare products, and scents applied to product packaging that signify the impor-
tance of aroma qualities in industrial manufacturing and commercial trade, are
examples of E-nose implementation in various types of industries [ 2 ].
Sensations find out the human being. It also might be true that olfactory
experiences mediate the first contact of the human being with the world, through
the mother's smell, which establishes his survival and represents the beginning of
his understanding.
Electronic nose is generally used for different applications in the food and bev-
erage industries: Identification, quantification, and quality control. In every appli-
cation, the principal goal is that the instrument should distinguish different
properties of different samples. An individual's properties could be qualities, ori-
gins, defects, and concentration of pollutants. One of the uses of this instrument is
that when applied on the analyzed products, the same structure as the one induced by
a human sensory panel allows instrumental measurement of sensory properties.
In the following pages of this chapter, various individual examples of E-nose
applications in each industry (i.e., automobile, food, packaging, cosmetic, drug,
etc.) and product areas (monitoring, analysis, classification, etc.) are discussed and
they are summarized in Table 8.1 [ 2 ].
8.1.1 Food Industry
The food industry is the biggest market for E-nose. Electronic nose utilization in
this field includes Inspection of the nature and quality of ingredients, supervision
of the manufacturing process, and all processes related to the shelf life of the
product. Quality assurance systems are required in the food processing industry.
Generally, qualitative assessment of food spoilage/worth is made by human
sensory panels that assess air samples and discriminate which food products are
good or offensive. In some cases, E-noses can be used to supplement or replace
panels of human experts. In other cases, E-noses can be used to reduce the amount
of analytical chemistry performed in food production, particularly when qualita-
tive results will carry out.
(a) Milk and dairy products
Electronic nose mainly focuses on the categorization of Parmesan cheeses with
rates of maturity for the different types. The E-nose effectively differentiates the
types and characterizes cheese using polypyrrole semiconductor sensors [ 3 ]. Milk
spoilage due to microbial/bacterial contamination can be identified from
the presence of acetaldehyde, acetic acid, and ethanol [ 4 , 5 ] in headspace of the