Posted by Marvin Garellek on Tue, May 01, 2012 @ 12:40 PM
IFAT ENTSORGA is taking place May 7-12 in Munich, Germany at the Munich Trade Fair Centre. IFAT is the world’s premier trade show for innovations and services in water, sewage, waste and raw materials management. Odor in wastewater treatment plants is one of the many topics that will be covered and where Odotech will be displaying its odor monitoring and tacking solution – OdoWatch.
Visit Booth A4 – 304, where Odotech will be located. There will be a working electronic nose on display as well as a real-time web based display of waste water treatment plant’s odor monitoring data. The solution connects to a weather station to display an odor plume, so the operator can “see” the odor and it is linked to alert points. Odotech General Manager for Europe – Stuart Lee, International Sales Manager – Marvin Garellek and CEO – Thierry Page will be there to answer questions about OdoWatch, and why municipalities rely on OdoWatch every day for proactive odor management.
See. Track. Control Odor. Booth A4 – 304. www.odotech.com
Posted by Sharon paterson on Fri, Apr 27, 2012 @ 10:52 AM
The Florida Water Resources Conference is planned for April 29 through May 4 in Orlando, Florida at the Renaissance SeaWorld Resort. There will be a two-day technical program covering topics in wastewater, collection systems, regulatory issues and potable systems, to name but a few. Odor in wastewater treatment plants is one of the many topics that will be presented.
Visit Booth #804 - 807, where Kruger (a Veolia Water company) will be located at MTS Environmental booths. MTS, as a representative for Kruger, provides the OdoWatch technology to municipal wastewater treatment plants in Florida. Kruger will have on display a functional model of the OdoWatch eNose. Kruger Product Manager Sharon Paterson will be there to answer your questions about OdoWatch, and why several U.S. municipalities rely on it every day for proactive odor management.
Florida Water Resources Conference, Inc. ("FWRC") is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization, which provides an annual educational and technical, multi-day conference servicing individuals in the water and wastewater industry. FWRC is a joint conference of the Florida Section of the American Water Works Association, the Florida Water Environment Association, and the Florida Water and Pollution Control Operators Association.
Posted by Thierry Page on Wed, Apr 25, 2012 @ 10:08 PM
The first permanent US installation of a unique technology that can actually “smell” an odor problem before it occurs has been on line in Tucson, Arizona, since 2009.
The Roger Road Wastewater Reclamation Facility (RRWRF) –TucsonAZ-is an older 41-MGD secondary wastewater treatment facility. Last upgraded and expanded in 1985, the Roger Road WRF was well known for having odor emission problems. Pima County Regional Wastewater reclamation Department completed in 2007 over 7-million dollars worth of odor control improvements at the facility. The facility is located along the banks of the Santa CruzRiverwash, at the base of theTucson Mountainsand adjacent to the I-10 Freeway.
This plant has odor emission sources:
As mentionned by Mr. Dennis Froehlich MS PE, System Wide Odor Control, Engineering Manager,Pima County, during his last presentation at the WEF 2012 Odors & Air Pollutants conference (The Relative Benefits of Dynamic vs Steady-State Continuous Odor Emissions Dispersion Monitoring for Multiple Sources) ''All of these sources have in common one characteristic: significant intermittent (read: dynamic) emissions driven by diurnal fluctuations in the plant processes and local meteorological conditions. So first they have to be identified and then quantified before they can be constructively addressed with a control plan. This meant continuous emissions monitoring.''
In January 2009, the OdoWatch Odor Continuous Monitoring System was installed for source emissions and controls monitoring to provide operators a consistent means of odor event awareness, process issue identification, and receptor impact estimation.
This system continuous emission monitoring system, the Odowatch System, employs a network of electronic noses monitoring odor and a local 10-meter tower with a meteorological station transmitting continuous emissions and met data via radio to a signal transceiver and router sending the data to a central modeling server. This server uses the data to update a locally calibrated Aermod dispersion model and serve the data in realtime to a windowing webpage presenting all of the data, plume map, alerts, and configuration data in four windows. This system also provides user configurable sampling locations where odor data at a given location are estimated from them model and saved.
OdoWatch®, operational at the Roger Road Wastewater Reclamation Facility, where six e-noses (electronic noses) calibrated to smell odors like the human nose are installed at the facility. The unit performs real-time air dispersion modelling to generate a colour-coded plume indicating the level of odour on a map of the site.
The odor monitoring system is capable monitoring facility’s compliance performance in terms of odor concentrations for nuisance threshold at fenceline, assumed as 7 D/T.
The odor is quantified by the system, and if the level begins to approach the threshold that can be perceived as a nuisance by a human nose, an alert notifies operators that actions must be taken to mitigate the situation. OdoWatch® can also be used to determine which source at a facility is causing the alert.
Mr. Froehlich reported that ''...this system is clearly state of the art... As a result of the monitoring, between 2009 and 2011, the low-pressure digester gas system was rebuilt, a flare shroud was designed and installed to shield the laminar flame from winds, and a chemical feed system was improved for chemical sulfide control in the primary clarifiers.''
Posted by Thierry Page on Fri, Apr 13, 2012 @ 07:50 AM
Odors and Air Pollutants 2012
This year’s Odors and Air Pollutants Conference will bring together environmental professionals from the technical and regulated communities to discuss state-of-the-art techniques for the assessment and control of odors and air pollutants while promoting the use and acceptance of effective innovative technologies. The conference will cater to the following technical session topics:
| Methods of Sampling, Measuring, and Estimating Emissions |
Odor and emission Control Systems |
| Odor Control Planning and Monitoring |
Biological Odor Control |
| Fate and Odor Modeling |
Innovative Technologies |
| Collection System Odors and Corrosion |
Design of Odor Control Systems |
| Emission from Biosolids |
Collection Systems Tunnel Ventilation |
Three presentations related to the use of OdoWatch - unique electronic nose odor monitoring technology – will be presented over the duration of this odor specialty conference.
The Relative Benefits of Dynamic vs Steady-State Continuous Odor Emissions Dispersion Monitoring for Multiple Sources, D. Froehlich , Pima County, AZ ; C. Mendes, Odotech
02E 11:30am Session 2: Planning for a Better Odor Tomorrow Monday, April 16 Room: 104 8:35am - 12:00pm
Using the Monitoring of Odors from a Biosolids Composting Site to Optimize the Process and Reduce the Costs D. Martin, T. Jean, Sede Environnement ; P. Micone, Odotech
07C 2:45pm Session 7: Biosolids Odors and Control: A Broad Perspective Tuesday, April 17 Room: 1:35pm - 5:00pm
Odor Control Using Chemical Dosing, Coupled with Odor Monitoring Electronic Noses on an Aeration Basin at a WWTP M. Feltner, A. Kennedy, J. Layne, Hampton Roads Sanitation District ; P. Neofotistos, US Peroxide ; T. Pagé, Odotech ; S. Paterson, Kruger
10D 11:00am Session 10: Innovative Approaches to Odor/Emissions Control and Estimating Wednesday, April 18 Room: 104 8:35am - 12:00pm
Come visit us at Booth: 114
Odotech will feature its patented technologies to see, track, monitor & manage odors 24/7 including eNoses and H2S detectors. Alerting operators during odor episodes give way to; proactive management; reduce complaints; chemical costs.
The conference will be held at the Kentucky International Convention Center
Louisville, Kentucky
Conference: April 15 –18, 2012
Exhibition: April 16–17, 2012
Cooperating Organizations:
Conference Brochure (PDF)
Posted by Thierry Page on Tue, Apr 10, 2012 @ 04:52 PM
| Odors are a natural byproduct of wastewater treatment, and a problem that has caused no shortage of headaches for cash-strapped public officials. But sanitation engineers in a Virginia Beach wastewater treatment plant have a powerful new tool to measure and minimize odors at their facility, thanks to an advanced new monitoring system based on electronic noses. |
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Designed to provide real-time, continuous measurements of odor emissions, the OdoWatch odor monitoring system gives sanitation workers the ability to see how much odor emissions their facility is producing, track what direction the wind is carrying them and how far the odors extend, all in a simple, automatically generated live webpage. The Virginia Beach WWTP used this tool to evaluate a new chemical treatment process, giving them a clearer picture of how much chemical to apply and when, thus tailoring their treatments in a way they never could before. After more than 18 months of research in real-life conditions, the system has delivered on its promise.
Since October 2009, three electronic noses have been monitoring odor emissions at the Chesapeake-Elizabeth Treatment Plant (CETP) in Virginia Beach. The Hampton Roads Sanitation District (HRSD), which covers 2,100 square miles of eastern Virginia, turned to OdoWatch in search of a more advanced, less costly technique to manage odors at the plant.
The results of this study will be presented at the next WEF Odors and Air Pollutants 2012. You can already access it by downloading the white paper on WWTP odor control chemical optimization using Electronic Noses.
Posted by Thierry Page on Fri, Mar 30, 2012 @ 05:36 AM
Odors can be a fact of life at waste management facilities and industrial plants, and a thorny issue to deal with. Despite clear impact odor emissions can have on the quality of life of both employees and those in the area around a facility, historically there have been few reliable means to manage them, largely because getting an accurate measurement of an odor’s level has been difficult.
An odor monitoring system is the tool that could change all that. Odotech, which has spent years developing a suite of software and odor detection technologies, developed the system out of a desire to offer a new, comprehensive approach that would provide a detailed and accurate picture of the odor emissions from a site.
OdoWatch combines a half-dozen pieces of software and technology to help create this image. First, a series of electronic noses can analyze the air for odors, using a sensor matrix that mimics the behavior of the human nose. Once positioned near the odor sources on a site, these e-noses communicate with each other over a wireless network, which also includes a weather station that monitors temperature, wind speed and other factors that could affect the distribution of the odors. All this information is fed into a pre-configured computer that can analyze the data, and the OdoWatch software then generates a map of the odor plume, overlaid onto a map of the site and the surrounding area.
This approach offers a series of unique advantages over less comprehensive odor detection techniques. Not only do the e-noses provide quantifiable measurements of odor levels at one given location, but the system can use atmospheric dispersion modeling to show the full extent and intensity of an odor plume. An odor monitoring system like OdoWatch combines automatic central monitoring of odor emissions with a clear display showing odor concentration that incorporates current weather data and is updated continuously.
Having such a robust monitoring system allows facility operators a broader range of information, and a greater degree of detail, than has ever been possible before. The use of multiple sensors throughout a site can help to identify how much odor is produced by each potential source, thereby helping staff pinpoint the sources most in need of odor containment efforts. The data log and odor dispersion history that the software will automatically archive provides a detailed record showing not only how strong a site’s odor emissions are, but how much they fluctuate depending on weather patterns or changes on the site.
At the same time, the fact that the odor monitoring system handles its data in real time can allow rapid responses to quick changes in odor emissions, while the electronic nature of the system allows the user to program automatic odor alerts into the software, to alert staff if odor emissions pass a certain point. By taking advantage of the same detailed information to pinpoint the exact source of the increased odors, staff can then coordinate their odor management response with more accuracy than ever before.
The advantages of an odor monitoring system amount to a revolution in how a facility can deal with odors. The system can provide new tools to help staff set their odor management priorities, while the ability to fine-tune a response means a site can reduce its odor neutralizer volume and use odor abatement equipment of the right size to address the odor problem, all while eliminating the need for existing on-site measurement and sampling efforts.
Having a set of records as detailed as those collected by the odor monitoring system can provide a major administrative advantage, as well. The data can help a facility save on costs associated with investigations or government reporting, while giving operators the information they need to ensure that their facility is always in compliance with its site permits and ensuring certificates of approval, all while cutting back on the costs of documentation.
Probably the most valuable advantage of an odor monitoring system, however, is that it can help reduce odors, often drastically. Multiple sites in North America and Europe have reported that adopting the OdoWatch system allowed them to reduce odor emissions to a fraction of their previous levels. This, obviously, can help a site demonstrate good corporate citizenship and improve relations with the surrounding community by minimizing its odor impact, but while also providing a shield against false claims or accusations.
New technology is offering more sophisticated tools than ever before to measure and analyze odors. An odor monitoring system combines these tools to take odor detection and measurement to a whole new level, transforming odor management from a kind of advanced guesswork to a science.
Posted by Sharon paterson on Tue, Mar 20, 2012 @ 04:36 PM
The Water Environment Federation’s Residuals and Biosolids Committee, in cooperation with the North Carolina Water Environment Association is sponsoring a specialty conference on residuals and biosolids management. This conference will highlight beneficial reuse options, science, and technologies currently available to leverage biosolids as a valuable resource.
Kruger is glad to sponsor this event and will feature OdoWatch, among other technologies. OdoWatch system's electronic nose is calibrated to "smell" odors and quantify them in odor units. With its unique ''odor alert'' capabilities, the real-time dispersion modeling provides site operators a step ahead in avoiding nuisance odor episodes in their community. OdoSulf is the first automated system designed specifically for Hydrogen Sulfide emissions. There will be a demo of OdoWatch available at the Kruger booth #111. Visit the booth and see the OdoWatch eNose respond to actual odor sources.
Residuals and Biosolids 2012: Advancing Residuals Management: Technologies and Applications
Raleigh Convention Center, Raleigh, North Carolina
Conference: March 25 - 28, 2012
Exhibition: March 26 - 27, 2012
Cooperating Organizations
Below are a few topic areas that will be part of the 2012 Conference.
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A. Advances in Stabilization Technologies
B. Agricultural and Industrial Residuals Management
C. Bioenergy from Residuals
D. Biosolids Land Application, Land Reclamation and Nutrient Management
E. Building Public Support and Addressing Political and Media Issues
F. Climate Change/Greenhouse Gas Issues
G. Conditioning and Dewatering Technologies
H. Environmental Management Systems
I. Facilities Operation, Management and Planning
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J. Future Opportunities and Emerging Technologies
K. Legislative, Regulatory and Legal Issues
L. Marketing of Biosolids and Residuals Products
M. Odor and Pathogen Control
N. Research and Development Activities
O. Southeast Regional Issues
P. Success Stories and Lessons Learned
Q. Sustainability
R. Thermal Processes
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Donwload our last Odor Monitoring White Paper on biosolids composting Optimization
Posted by Thierry Page on Fri, Mar 16, 2012 @ 08:02 AM
Control of odors at composting sites has gotten significant attention over the last 10-15 years. Installing a disciplined odor monitoring and control program can help to improve process efficiency. This proactive approach will translate into improved process control leading to a reduction in costs related to odor control.
When one of Europe’s largest composting sites was facing regulatory pressure and neighbors’ complaints about the odors being produced by the facility, they turned to a revolutionary new monitoring system that led to a drastic reduction in odor emissions after less than a year in operation.
OdoWatch, a suite of electronic noses, weather equipment and advanced software developed by OdoTech, is designed to provide the most comprehensive and accurate picture available of the odors emitted by a site. The system creates a real-time map showing the size, shape and concentration of the odor plume, and constantly refreshes the image with new data.
Armed with this information, the compost site managed to cut its odor emissions by 40 percent in the first six months after OdoWatch was installed. The system stayed in place after its one year initial period ended, and the reductions continued: By the en of the second year, odor emissions from the site had been cut by almost 75 percent.
The facility, which covers 8 hectares in northeastern France and handles 110,000 metric tons of wastewater sludge and green waste each year, used OdoWatch to identify exactly how much each of the site’s leachate collection tanks and fermentation piles was contributing to the site’s odor emissions. The system helped to correct a costly misconception, by revealing that the overwhelming majority of odors were coming from a single fermentation area and allowing plant technicians to focus their improvements more accurately.
Data collected by OdoWatch also revealed that the impact of odor emissions from the site was considerably less than complaints from neighboring villages had made it seem. Not only was the site shown to be in compliance with French regulations governing odors released by composting operations, but the site’s odor emissions turned out to fall below the human sensory threshold only 150 meters away from the site. And because OdoWatch can analyze how weather patterns affect the odor plume, the system provided a clear picture of how prevailing winds could change the picture.
The unique capabilities provided by OdoWatch’s integrated monitoring system gave plant workers the information they needed to design an entirely new odor management approach. The ability to precisely identify odor sources and react promptly to changes in weather or odor emissions opened the door to a range of preventive measures and quick responses that were made possible by the tools that OdoWatch provides.
Posted by Marvin Garellek on Wed, Mar 07, 2012 @ 07:55 AM
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Globe 2012 is North America’s largest international trade show of advanced environmental and clean energy solutions taking place in Vancouver March 14–16 2012. Visit Odotech - Booth 1617. |
Odotech will be exhibiting its OdoWatch™ patented automated real time solution for the monitoring and management of odors at Globe 2012 Booth 1617. The solution features an electronic nose technology that sniffs odors around the clock in conjunction with a weather station. Seeing the odor on the screen, the direction it is going, alerts site operators to an upcoming odor problem, enabling them to proactively respond before the odor becomes a real problem. The OdoWatch solution reduces odour complaints, contributes to operational efficiency and saves on chemical treatment costs. Odotech’s senior sales personnel will be meeting with Government Policy Makers and with Senior Corporate Executives and high-level decision makers from companies that require odor control including; Waste Water Plants; Composting sites, Landfills and Petro Chemical companies.
Visit Booth 1617 and meet Andrew and Marv to find out how installing a disciplined odor monitoring and control program can help improve process efficiency lead to a substantial reduction in costs related to odor control. See. Track. Control Odor.
Posted by Thierry Page on Tue, Feb 28, 2012 @ 08:17 PM
We are honoured to present you a special blog edition written by our guest author Dr. Johannes Frasnelli.
Dr. Frasnelli specialises in odor perception. He conducts research in the field of neurophysiology of smell and taste as well as therapy in loss of the chemical senses.
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Let’s say we go for a walk through the city with a friend. At some point we are getting hungry and we happen to walk by a rotisserie. As we walk through the fumes, we say to our companion: “This smells so nice; I would like to eat some grilled chicken.” So we decide to enter the rotisserie; as soon as we open the door the lovely smell of grilled chicken is getting even stronger. We order and finally the waiter serves a plate with a beautiful grilled chicken. We start eating, the chicken is impeccable, and with the first bite we take, we say to our companion: “This tastes so good, the chicken is just lovely.” Our companion agrees, since he is as happy with his chicken as we are. So, we both enjoy our food; the question is, are we both right? Are we right when we say that food “tastes” good?
(Click here to know where this rotisserie is! The chicken is amaizing)
Let’s first have a look at the sense of taste. With our sense of taste, we are able to perceive the five basic tastes. They are: salty, sour, bitter, sweet and umami. We all know salty (for example, salt), sour (for example, lemons), bitter (for example, coffee), and sweet (for example, cherries); umami is less known. Umami, which is a Japanese word and means “pleasant savory taste”; it indeed describes a savory taste as we find it in meat, tomatoes, mushrooms, parmesan cheese etc.
However, these five basic tastes are not enough to perceive the flavor of food. Rather, we perceive the flavor of food via the sense of smell! But how in the world would odor molecules reach the nose when we have food in our mouth – even if we close the mouth while chewing, as we were taught when we were children? The solution to this is that the odor molecules use the back entrance to get into the nose. From the oral cavity, they travel backwards, until they reach the throat; the throat is connected to the nasal cavity (the inside of the nose) in the top, to the oral cavity (the mouth in the middle), and in the bottom part it is connected to the larynx and eventually to the trachea and the lungs as well as to the esophagus.Odor molecules can easily travel from the mouth to the nose via this connection in the throat. So, they can reach the olfactory receptors, and they can evoke a smell perception. The interesting thing is that we do not realise that this happens in the nose, we have the impression that our perception stems from the mouth; and therefore we say “the chicken tastes good.” We call this perception of flavors retronasal olfaction, which means nothing else than “smelling the back of the nose”.
Source: http://www.drsharma.ca
It may be difficult to believe but we can actually test whether this is true. For example, if we have a cold, our nose is stuffed. We cannot breathe through our nose, and we can’t smell anything. If we eat something during having a cold we also realise that every food tastes bland. We are still able to perceive its sweetness, its saltiness, its bitterness, its saltiness, and its savoriness, even if we have a blocked nose, but we would have a hard time to distinguish an apple from a pineapple. Both are sweet and a bit sour, and we would still perceive this, but in order to perceive the typical apple flavor and the typical pineapple flavor we have to rely on the sense of smell. The access to the receptors of the sense of smell is however blocked, since the nose is blocked when we have a cold; so we are not be able to perceive the flavors and consequently we cannot distinguish apples from pineapples.
We can test retronasal olfaction even if we have no cold in a fun experiment. You need two persons, one who is tested (the subject) and the other one who is testing (the experimenter). The experimenter prepares different food with a similar texture; alternatively you can also use candies with different flavors for this experiment. Similar texture is important, because we do not need to perceive the flavor to distinguish a banana from an almond, we can do that by feeling both fruits with the tongue. The experimenter picks two fruits (let’s say strawberries and ripe mangos; or apples and pineapples). The subject closes his eyes and pinches its nose. Then the experimenter hands the subjects a spoon with a small piece of the fruit. The subject inserts the fruit into the mouth while keeping the nose pinched. He should then try to identify the fruit. You will see that this is very difficult to do. At some point the subject can unpinch the nose, and all of a sudden he will have no problem in identifying the food.
Why is this? When the nose is pinched, much less air can travel to the nose, even from the back and the odor molecules cannot reach the receptors. When however the nose is unpinched, air travels freely through the nose, the odor molecules reach the receptors, and we perceive the flavor.
As we see, flavor perception is mostly driven by the sense of smell. To come back to the question we had in the beginning: we are not right if we say the food tastes good, we should rather say it smells good, even if we are already eating it. The thing is: we probably do not care, as long as the food is good.
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About the author: Dr. Johannes Frasnelli Ph.D.
Dr. J. Frasnelli is a graduate of the Medical Schools of the University of Vienna (Austria; 2001; Dr. med. univ.) and the Technical University of Dresden (Germany; 2009; Priv.-Doz.). Since 2006 he work in Montreal, first as an Academic Trainee at the Montreal Neurological Institute, since 2008 as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Psychology at the Université de Montréal. He currently hold a fellowship of the CIHR. Dr. Frasnelli research interest is the neurophysiology of smell and taste as well as therapy in loss of the chemical senses.
Contact information: johannes.frasnelii@umontreal.ca
Personal links: