Recently, so-called electronic nose or artificial nose has been introduced to the odour
research, which was originally applied in food industries to identify the quality of food products.
The main principle of these technique is to use an array of solid state sensors combined with
neural network software to analyse the signals. To identify the characteristics of different
odour sources, odour samples were collected from different incoming vehicles to the landfill
site, respectively, which represent different odour sources such as sludge from sewage
treatment works, municipal wastes and construction wastes. The samples from known
sources were first analyzed by an e-nose (Alpha MOS - FOX4000) to record their odour
characteristics as finger prints. Some odour samples collected at the boundary of the landfill
sites as unknown samples were also analyzed by the e-nose. The odour patterns between
individual known samples and unknown samples were statistically recognized by comparing
their similarity index (SI) with a purpose of identifying the major odour emission sources which
contribute to the odour pollution.
Table 4 Odour Samples Collected from Different Waste Sourc