SEMINAR REPORT

ON

E-NOSE
Submitted in partial fulfillment for the award of the degree
BACHELOR OF TECHNOLOGY

IN
ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING
SUBMITTED TO:
Dr. Nidhika Birla

SUBMITTED BY:
Mukesh Kumar
1812008

HARYANA ENGINEERING COLLEGE

JAGADHRI
KURUKSHETRA UNIVERSITY, KURUKSHETRA
Session: 2012-2016

INTRODUCTION
In an ever-developing world, where electronic devices are duplicating every
other sense of perception, the sense of smell is lagging behind. Yet, recently,
there has been an urgent increase in the need for detecting odours, to replace
the human job of sensing and quantification.
Some of the most important applications fall in the category where human
beings cannot afford to risk smelling the substance. Other important
applications are continuous monitoring, medical applications, etc. These
applications allow man to perform tasks that were once considered
impossible. The fast paced technology has helped develop sophisticated
devices that have brought the electronic nose to miniature sizes and
advanced capabilities. The trend is such that there will be accurate,
qualitative and quantitative measurements of odour in the near future.
Living beings interact with the surrounding environment through particular
interfaces called senses, which can be divided in two groups: those detecting
physical quantities and those detecting chemical quantities.
Physical interfaces (that deals with acoustic, optic, temperature and
mechanic interaction mechanisms) are sufficiently well known and a wealth
of successful studies to construct their artificial counterparts has been done
in the past years. On the other side the chemical interfaces (bio transducers
of chemical species in air: olfaction, and in solution: taste) even if well
described in literature, present some aspects of their physiological working
principal that are still unclear. It has also to be remarked a psychological
difference, in human beings, between the two groups.

Indeed the information from the physical senses can be adequately

elaborated, verbally expressed, firmly memorized and fully communicated.
On the contrary chemical information, coming from nose and tongue, are
surrounded by vagueness and this is reflected in the poor description and
memorization capacity in reporting olfactory and tasting experiences.
Chemical information is of primary importance for the major part of the
animals; for many of them, indeed, chemistry is the unique realm of which
they are concerned, while for human beings evolution has enhanced about
exclusively the physical interfaces, leaving little care of the chemical
interface, if we exclude unconscious acquisition and side behaviours.
For these intrinsic difficulties toward the understanding of the nature of
these senses for many years only sporadic research on the possibility of
fabricating artificial olfactory systems were performed. Only at the end of
the eighties a new and promising approach was introduced. It was based on
the assumption that an array of non-selective chemical sensors, matched
with a suitable data processing method, could mimic the functions of
olfaction.
In the past decade, electronic nose instrumentation has generated much
interest internationally for its potential to solve a wide variety of problems in
fragrance and cosmetics production, food and beverages manufacturing,
chemical engineering, environmental monitoring, and more recently,
medical diagnostics and bioprocesses. Several dozen companies are now
designing and selling electronic nose units globally for a wide variety of
expanding markets. An electronic nose is a machine that is designed to
detect and discriminate among complex odours using a sensor array. The

sensor array of consists of broadly tuned (non-specific) sensors that are

treated with a variety of odour-sensitive biological or chemical materials.
An odour stimulus generates a characteristic fingerprint (or smell-print) from
the sensor array. Patterns or fingerprints from known odours are used to
construct a database and train a pattern recognition system so that unknown
odours can subsequently be classified and identified. Thus, electronic nose
instruments are comprised of hardware components to collect and transport
odours to the sensor array - as well as electronic circuitry to digitise and
stored the sensor responses for signal processing.

PRINCIPLE OF E-NOSE
Enter the gas sensors of the electronic nose. This speedy, reliable new
technology undertakes what till now has been impossible continuous real
monitoring of odor at specific sites in the field over hours, days, weeks or
even months.
An electronic device can also circumvent many other problems associated
with the use of human panels. Individual variability, adaptation (becoming
less sensitive during prolonged exposure), fatigue, infections, mental state,
subjectivity, and exposure to hazardous compounds all come to mind. In
effect, the electronic nose can create odor exposure profiles beyond the
capabilities of the human panel or GC/MS measurement techniques.
The electronic nose is a system consisting of three functional components
that operate serially on an odorant sample- a sample handler, an array of gas
sensors, and a signal processing system. The output of the electronic nose
can be the identity of the odorant, an estimate of the concentration of the

odorant, or the characteristic properties of the odor as might be perceived by

a human.
Mimicking the nose is a challenging task. The human nose can smell 10,000
different odour molecules mixed in air. Odour in a substance is due to
certain volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which easily evaporate and get
carried by an air stream. An e-nose can smell and estimate odours quickly
though it has little or no resemblance to the human nose.
A human nose has receptors, which serve as binding sites for VOCs. A
receptor is just a molecular structure on the surface of the nerve cell to
which an odorous molecule with the right shape binds. The receptor and the
binding molecule fit exactly as in a key and lock arrangement. These odoursensing nerve cells line the upper part of the cavity in the human nose.
Once an odour molecule binds to a receptor, a chain reaction follows which
ultimately transmits an electrical signal to the brain. A specific odour of
coffee or wine is usually caused not by one, but a mixture of hundreds of
organic compounds. So, the brain has a mammoth task of processing signals
received from the nerve cells originating from the nose, to identify the nature
of smell. The exact working of the brain in processing these signals is yet to
be fully understood.
An electronic nose can be defined as an instrument which is comprised of
an array of electronic chemical sensors with partial specificity and an
appropriate pattern recognition system, capable of recognizing simple or
complex odours (and other gaseous mixtures). The ability of an electronic
nose to rapidly discriminate between slight variations in complex mixtures

makes the techniques ideal for on-line process diagnostics and screening
across a wide range of application areas. An electronic nose is a machine
that is designed to detect and discriminate among complex odours using a
sensor array.
The sensor array of consists of broadly tuned (non-specific) sensors that are
treated with a variety of odour-sensitive biological or chemical materials. An
odour stimulus generates a characteristic fingerprint (or smell-print) from the
sensor array. Patterns or fingerprints from known odours are used to
construct a database and train a pattern recognition system so that unknown
odours can subsequently be classified and identified. Thus, electronic nose
instruments are comprised of hardware components to collect and transport
odours to the sensor array as well as electronic circuitry to digitise and
stored the sensor responses for signal processing.
The two main components of an electronic nose are the sensing system and
the automated pattern recognition system. The sensing system can be an
array of several different sensing elements (e.g., chemical sensors), where
each element measures a different property of the sensed chemical, or it can
be a single sensing device (e.g., spectrometer) that produces an array of
measurements for each chemical, or it can be a combination. Each chemical
vapour presented to the sensor array produces a signature or pattern
characteristic of the vapour. By presenting many different chemicals to the
sensor array, a database of signatures is built up. This database of labelled
signatures is used to train the pattern recognition system.
The goal of this training process is to configure the recognition system to
produce unique classifications of each chemical so that an automated

identification can be implemented. The quantity and complexity of the data

collected by sensors array can make conventional chemical analysis of data
in an automated fashion difficult. One approach to chemical vapour
identification is to build an array of sensors, where each sensor in the array
is designed to respond to a specific chemical. With this approach, the
number of unique sensors must be at least as great as the number of
chemicals being monitored. It is both expensive and difficult to build highly
selective chemical sensors. Artificial neural networks (ANNs), which have
been used to analyse complex data and to recognize patterns, are showing
promising results in chemical vapour recognition.
When an ANN is combined with a sensor array, the number of detectable
chemicals is generally greater than the number of sensors. Also, less
selective sensors, which are generally less expensive, can be used with this
approach. Once the ANN is trained for chemical vapour recognition,
operation consists of propagating the sensor data through the network. Since
this is simply a series of vector-matrix multiplications, unknown chemicals
can be rapidly identified in the field. Electronic noses that incorporate ANNs
have been demonstrated in various applications. Some of these applications
will be discussed later in the paper. Many ANN configurations and training
algorithms have been used to build electronic noses including back
propagation-trained, feed-forward networks; fuzzy ART maps; Cohunes
self-organizing maps (SOMs); learning vector quantizers (LVQs); Hamming
networks; Boltzmann machines; and Hopfield networks. Figure 1 illustrates
the basic schematic of an electronic nose.

Sensing an Odorant

In a typical e-nose, an air sample is pulled by a vacuum pump through a tube

into a small chamber housing the electronic sensor array. The tube may be of
plastic or stainless steel. A sample-handling unit exposes the sensors to the
odorant, producing a transient response as the VOCs interact with the active
material. The sensor response is recorded and delivered to the signalprocessing unit. Then a washing gas such as alcohol is applied to the array
for a few seconds or a minute, so as to remove the odorant mixture from the
active material. Finally, the reference gas is again applied to the array, to
prepare it for a new measurement cycle. The odorant is applied for a period
equal to the response time of the sensor array. The washing and reference
gases are applied for the sensor array to recover and come to a reference
point. This duration is termed the recovery time.
During this interval, the sensors response is recorded and delivered to
the signal processing unit. Then, a washing gas such as an alcohol vapor
is applied to the array for a few seconds to a minute, so as to remove the
odorant mixture from the surface and bulk of the sensors active
material. (Some designers choose to skip this washing step) Finally, the
reference gas is applied to the array, to prepare it for a new measurement
cycle. The period during which the odorant is applied is called the
response time of the sensor array. The period during which the washing
and reference gases are applied is termed the recovery time.

ELECTRONIC NOSE SENSORS

Electronic nose sensors fall in four categories: Conductivity Sensors
Piezo Electric Sensors
MOSFET Sensors and,

 Optical Sensors.
CONDUCTIVITY SENSORS
There are two types of conductivity sensors.
a. Metal Oxide Sensor
b. Polymer Sensor
Both of them exhibit a property of change in assistance when exposed to
volatile organic compounds.
Metal Oxide Sensor

Metal Oxide Semi conductor sensors have been used more extensively in
electronic nose instruments and are widely available commercially. Typical
metal Oxide sensors include oxides of tin, zinc, titanium, tungsten and
Iridium doped with a noble metal catalyst such as platinum or palladium.
The doped semi conducting material with which the VOCs interact is
deposited between two metal contacts over a resistive heating element,
which operates at 200oc to 4000c. At these elevated temperature, heat
dispersion becomes a factor in the mechanical design of the sensing

chamber. Micro machining is often used to thin the sensor substrate under
the active material, so that power consumption and heat dissipation
requirements are reduced. As a VOC passes over the doped oxide material,
the resistance between the two metal contacts changes in proportion to the
concentration of the
VOC.
The recipe for the active sensor material is designed to enhance the response
to specific odorants, such as carbon monoxide or ammonia. Selectivity can
be further improved by altering the operating temperature. Sensor sensitivity
ranges from 5 to 500 parts per million. The sensor also respond to water,
vapor, more specifically to humidity differences between the gas sample
being analyzed and a known reference gas used to initialize the sensor.
The baseline response of metal oxide sensors is prone to drift over periods of
hours to days, so signal processing algorithms should be employed to
counteract this property. The sensors are also susceptible to
poisoning (irreversible binding) by sulphur compounds present in the
odorant mixture. But their wide availability and relatively low cost make
them the most widely used gas sensors today.
Polymer Sensor
Conducting polymer sensors, a second type of conductivity sensor, are also
commonly used in electronic nose systems. Here, the active material in the
above figure is a conducting polymer from such families as the polypyroles,
thiophenes, indoles or furans. Changes in the conductivity of these materials
occur as they are exposed to various types of chemicals, which bond with
the polymer backbone. The bonding may be ionic or in some cases, covalent.
The interaction affects the transfer of electrons along the polymer chain, that

is to say its conductivity is strongly influenced by the counter ions and

functional groups attached to the polymer backbone.
In order to use these polymers in a sensor device, micro fabrication
techniques are employed to form two electrodes separated by a gap of 10 to
20 micrometre. Then the conducting polymer is electro polymerized
between the electrodes by cycling the voltage between them. For example,
layers of polypyrroles can be formed by cycling between -0.7 and +1.4 V.
Varying the voltage sweep rate and applying a series of polymer precursors
yields a wide variety of active materials. Response time is inversely
proportional to the polymers thickness. To speed response times,
micrometer size conducting polymer bridges are formed between the
contract electrodes.
PIEZO ELECTRICAL SENSORS
The Piezoelectric family of sensors also has two members: quarts crystal
microbalance (QCM) and surface acoustic-wave (SAW) devices. They can
measure temperature mass changes, pressure, force and acceleration but in
the electronic once, they are configured as mass-change-sensing device.
QCM SENSOR

The QCM types consist of a resonating disk a few millimeters in diameter,

with metal elect odes on each side connected to dead wise. The device
resonate at a characteristic frequency (10MHz to 30MHz) when excited with
an oscillating signal.
During manufacture, a polymer coating is applied to the disk-polymer,
device and thereby reducing the resonance frequency. The reduction is
inversely proportional to odorant mass absorbed by the polymer for
example; a 166um-thick quartz crystal cut along a certain axis will resonate
at 10 MHz positive 0.01 percent change in mass, a negative shift of 1 KHz
will occur in its resonance frequency. Then when the sensor is exposed to a
reference gas, the resonance frequency returns to its baseline value.
SAW SENSOR

The Saw Sensor differs from QCMs in several important ways. First, A
Rayliegh (Surface) wave travels over the surface of the device; not
throughout its volume. SAW sensors operate at much higher frequencies,
and so can generate a larger change in frequency. A typical SAW device
operates in the hundreds of megahertz, while 10MHZ is more typical for a
QCM, but SAW device can measure changes in mass to the same order of
magnitude as QCMs. Even though the frequency range is larger, increased
surface-to-volume ratios mean the Signal-tonoise ratio is usually poorer.
Hence, SAW device be less sensitive the QCMs in some instances.
MOSFET SENSORS
MOSFET odor sensing device are based on the principle that VOCs in
contact with a catalytic metal can produce a reaction in the metal and the
reactions products can diffuse through the gate of the MOSFET to
change the electrical properties of the device. A typical MOSFET structure
has p-type substrate with two n doped regions with metal contacts labeled
source and drain as shown in fig.

OPTICAL SENSORS

Optical fiber sensors, yet another type, utilize glass fibers with a thin
chemically active material coating on their sides or ends as shown in Fig. A
light source at a single frequency (or at a narrow band of frequencies) is
used to interrogate the active material, which in turn responds with a change
in color to the presence of the VOCs to be detected and measured.
The active materials contain chemically active fluorescent dyes immobilized
in an organic polymer matrix. As VOCs interact with it, the polarity of the
fluorescent dyes is altered and they respond by shifting their fluorescent
emission spectrum. When a pulse of light from and external source

interrogates the sensor, the fluorescent dye responds by emitting light a

different Excitation (originalwavelength) frequency. As the source intensity
is much greater than sensor response great care must be taken to ensure that
the response photodetectors are protected from the source emissions.

APPLICATIONS
The electronic nose finds lot of application in many fields. They have been
used in a variety of applications and could help solve problems in many
fields

including

food

product

quality

assurance,

environmental monitoring, pharmaceuticals etc.

health

care,

CONCLUSION

In the seminar, it is mentioned more accurately termed electronic arrays

for chemical sensing and identification. In this quick tour of the route
from molecule to smell, it is helpful to correlate many of the discrete
physiological steps with engineering ones ranging from sampling, signal
processing and application all the way to neural computation.

REFERENCES
1. www.smartnose.com
2. www.askjeeves.com
3. The how and why of electronic nose, IEEE Spectrum, Sep 1998
4. The design of smelling, IEEE Spectrum, Sep 1998
5. The electronic nose in Liliput, IEEE Spectrum, Sep 1998