New Sensor System for Environmental Monitoring: the Potentiometric Electronic Tongue

The use of electronic tongues is proposed for two different environmental monitoring applications. This approach in chemical analysis consists of an array of nonspecific sensors coupled with a multivariate calibration tool. In this case, the proposed arrays were formed by potentiometric sensors based on polymeric membranes (PVC) and the subsequent cross-response processing was based on a multilayer artificial neural network (ANN) model. Special attention was paid in compensating temperature effects and response drifts in the sensors. In addition, in order to demonstrate the viability of the proposed systems for automated remote applications, the use of data transmission by radiofrequency has been tested.