Industrial e-Nose Applications

An e-Nose is an electronic nose, a sensor that mimics the olfactory capabilities of animals and allows a quantitative identification of the vapor constituents of a sample. Until now, most attempts at e-Nose sensors and systems utilized previous generation technologies such as:

• metal oxide semiconductors (MOS)
• conducting polymers (CP)
• quartz crystal microbalance
• surface acoustic wave (SAW)
• mass spectrometry
• gas chromatography

Utilizing a new and proprietary MEMS-based solution, NevadaNano has developed a core technology that will revolutionize e-Nose applications by offering small size, low-cost, long-term unattended operation, and the ability to detect a very wide range of vapor types with a single sensor configuration. Electronic nose instruments are used by research and development laboratories, quality control laboratories and process and production departments for various purposes:

• In R&D laboratories for:
  • Formulation or reformulation of products
  • Benchmarking with competitive products
  • Shelf life and stability studies
  • Selection of raw materials
  • Packaging interaction effects

• Simplification of consumer preference test in quality control laboratories for in-line quality control such as:
  • Conformity of raw materials, intermediate and final products
  • Batch-to-batch consistency
  • Detection of contamination, spoilage, adulteration
  • Origin or vendor selection
  • Monitoring of storage conditions

• In process and production departments for:
  • Managing raw material variability
  • Comparison with a reference product
  • Measurement and comparison of the effects of manufacturing process on products
  • Cleaning-in-place process efficiency monitoring
  • Scale-up monitoring

Application areas include Flavor & Fragrance, Food & Beverage, Packaging, Pharmaceutical, Cosmetic & Perfumes, Chemical companies. More information on Electronic Noses can be found here.