Electronic nose (e-nose) is a device that plays an
important role for odor assessment due to its low cost and widerange applications. Currently, e-nose is widely used in the food
industry such as coffee, wines, beers etc. Coffee is one of the most
popular beverages in the human history. There are various types
of products, for examples, roast/round, instant/soluble and
ready-to-drink coffees etc. At present, coffee shop businesses are
growing in Thailand and each of which has promoted its identity
of coffee aroma. Nevertheless, the taste and aroma of the coffee
are often not well controlled due to the lack of method to identify
the odor standard. Hence, this problem should be solved to
maintain consumers’ satisfaction. In this paper, we have studied
about the factors that affect on coffee taste and coffee aroma by
using electronic nose. This instrument was designed to be
portable and capable of measuring the coffee samples in both
liquid and solid forms. Metal oxide semiconductors (MOS) were
used as the sensing materials to detect changing of coffee odor at
different conditions. The e-nose is composed of a flow system, a
sensor array and data acquisition/analysis. It was found that the
e-nose is capable to distinguish different brands of instant coffee
products and is able to classify coffee odors at different mixtures.
The results reveal that the concentrations and temperatures can
affect the smell of quality of coffee. Based on this study, we are
very optimistic that this e-nose will be very useful for coffee
industry in Thailand