Application of non-specific gas sensors for detecting odour abatement process failure

An array of non-specific gas sensors were used to continuously monitor for changes in the compositions of an odorous emission. Wastewater was sparged to generate a headspace gas which was subsequently transferred to an online flowcell for periodic anatysis by an array of conducting polymer sensors. Response patterns between the different sensors were used to detect for the presence of changes in the composition of the headspace gas. In order to stimulate process failure, the wastewater was periodically spiked with known concentration of different chemicals to promote abnormalities in the wastewater headspace gas. A model was developed for the detection and identification of sudden changes in the sensor responses and was successfully tested using large datasets acquired over several months. The results demonstrated that a chemical sensor array can act as an online monitoring system for the detection of odour treatment process failures and could be more widely accepted for monitoring the treatment performance of odour abatement systems.