Application of Odems (odorant Dispersion and Emissions Monitoring System) to Measure Odorous Emissions from Composting Plant

Odour annoyance represents a very important issue of societal and industrial perspective. It can be due to the intrinsic character of the odour, its frequency and the moment of the perception. Location of industries depends on their odour acceptability in the neighbourhood. As 13 to 20% of the population in European countries would be annoyed by environmental odours, stringent regulations are being enforced for odor monitoring and recently, several works have been carried out to determine suitable and valuable strategies/methods to limit odor annoyance.Industrial and agricultural activities generate atmospheric pollution and olfactive nuisances due to the emission of a complex mixture of volatile compounds. Hydrogen sulphide (H2S) and ammonia (NH3) are clearly identified within composting plants (Cabrol et al, 2012) and due to their high olfactory impact, have to be monitored as mentioned in a report of the French Environmental and Energy Management Agency (ADEME, 2012).ODEMS is a system composed by a network of miniature and autonomous sensors combined with reversed dispersion (Figure 1) and dispersion (Figure 2) modelling systems and enable to provide reliable spatial and temporal information down to the low ppbv level. The miniaturized cost-effective sensors Cairsens are based on amperometric detection and are developed by Cairpol company. Ammonia and hydrogen sulfide sensors have been deployed within a composting plant for determining the odorous sources and evaluating the real impact on the neighbourhood. After a period of data collection, considering weather conditions, this study revealed that this system is also able to predict the impact of a site-specific activity.