Standards Development

Scope

This document specifies requirements for instrumental odour monitoring systems for the monitoring of odour in ambient air and in emissions to ambient air.

This document is intended to assess the suitability of IOMS to generate relevant indicators for the presence and attributes of odour as would be perceived by human observers. A benefit of instrumental odour monitoring systems is that they can be used for continuous measurement.

Odour monitoring systems are typically limited in their ability to mimic human olfaction and its very specific sensitivity to a large number of odorants.

Odour monitoring systems currently give results limited to a reduced number of substances, that can help to estimate potential odorant impact.

In most applications, many compounds (e.g. non odorous compounds or background odorants) act as interferents for IOMS. Humidity and temperature are common interferences, too. Addictionally, some odorants that influence odour perception can be at low concentrations. This can lead to false results.

The metrological performance of IOMS and the validation of correlation of the measurement result (odour metric which is output of IOMS) with human odour perception are therefore key topics in this document.

This document is part 2 of a series of 3 standards.

The three parts of the standards are:

• Instrumental Odour Monitoring Systems (IOMS) - Part 1: Definitions and general aspects

• Instrumental Odour Monitoring Systems (IOMS) - Part 2: Technical specifications and QA/QC requirements

• Instrumental Odour Monitoring Systems (IOMS) - Part 3: Field validation

This document is applicable to instrumental odour monitoring in:

1) ambient air;

2) ambient air at the fence line of the source installation;

3) odorous gas emissions, including waste gases upstream of odorant abatement devices

This Document is not applicable to:

a) Determination of the odour concentration in ouE/m3, for which the reference method is specified in EN 13725. This document is not aimed to demonstrate the equivalency between the determination of odour concentration using a IOMS and the method described in EN 13725;

b) direct monitoring of hedonic tone (or pleasantness or unpleasantness) even if a qualitative data (attributes) can be supplied by a trained IOMS;

c) direct assessment of odour annoyance;

d) the technical design of the odour monitoring system;

e) the monitoring of air quality for purposes of environmental health and safety

This part 2 is related to the technical specifications of an IOMS and on QA/QC requirements for its use.

Purpose

Instrumental Odour Monitoring Systems (IOMS), normally called ‘e-noses’, are devices that can give an important contribution for improvement of ambient air quality for all citizens that live in areas affected by traffic, industrial plants, waste treatments, livestock farming or all other human activities that can alter the quality or air in terms of odour nuisance. The introduction of such devices can take to systematic monitoring of ambient air, helping to recognise, analyse and limit the effect of human activities in similarities with the introductions of Automatic Measurements Systems (AMSs) for emission monitoring. Now there is no European Standard that give the necessary information in order to harmonise the use of IOMS in EC.

Note: in case the WI is based on documents from other organizations than ISO/IEC, please specify it here