How Does The Electronic Nose Work?

electronic nose, nose

The electronic nose as the name suggests, is a device that detects smell. It is more effective than the human sense of smell. The electronic nose detects hazardous or poisonous gas which is not possible to human sniffers. The Electronic Nose utilizes the concepts of sensor technology, biochemistry, electronics, and Artificial Intelligence to design the biological olfactory system with an instrument capable of identifying the aroma mixture.

The smells are composed of molecules, which have a specific size and shape. Each of these molecules has a correspondingly sized and shaped receptor in the human nose. When a specific receptor receives a molecule it sends a signal to the brain and the brain identifies the smell associated with the particular molecule. The electronic nose work similarly to a human nose. It uses sensors as the receptor. When a specific sensor receives the molecules, it transmits the signal to a program instead of the brain, for processing.

It consists of a detecting system, a computing system, and a sample delivery system. The digital output is required to be analyzed; this is done either by graphical analysis, multivariate data analysis, and network analysis.

This technology has varied applications in numerous fields. It is used in medical diagnostics and health monitoring, environmental monitoring, detection of explosives, research and development industries, quality control laboratories, etc. The electronic nose is mostly used in food industries for rapid non-destructive analysis of food quality. It may be applicable in quality control of raw material, food processing, or products.

Computer Science has progressed a lot and it has innumerable applications in various fields. The Electronic nose is a significant edition in this series.

Hope you enjoyed and learnt something from this post. On similar lines, here’s a post about sensor fabrics that might interest you! Don’t you wish these things were available someday on Amazon just for you to try out?

For those interested in a more visual experience of this explanation, you can watch this video.

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