Compensatory methods for the odor concentration in an electronic nose system using software and hardware

Compensatory methods for changes in odor concentration of a target sample i n an electronic nose system have been investigated. An automatic sampler th at automatically adjusts the odor concentration of the sample has been deve loped. The sampler consists of a mass dow controller, two electromagnetic v alves and two stainless steel buffers equipped with two sensors for monitor ing the odor concentration. The odor concentration of the sample is kept at a certain level by controlling the valves and the mass flow controller acc ording to feed back signals of the monitoring sensors. Using this sampler, identification of unstable volatile samples was successfully performed, reg ardless of the state of the samples and the environmental conditions. A sof tware-based compensatory method was also examined. (C) 2001 Elsevier Scienc e B.V. All rights reserved.