Monitoring odour emisssions from an oil & gas plant: Electronic nose performance testing in the field

This paper focuses on performance testing of electronic noses for environmental odour monitoring in terms of their capability of correctly classifying odours at low odour concentrations. The studied case concerns the realization of an electronic nose network for the continuous monitoring of odour emissions from a crude oil extraction and separation plant. The novelty of the work consists in the fact that performance testing, which is typically carried out in laboratory before installation in the field for environmental odour monitoring outside the plant boundaries, in this case was carried out after installation with the aim of testing the instruments performances in the effective working conditions. This involved the necessity to develop a specific and repeatable procedure to obtain samples at known quality and concentration in the field. Electronic nose performance was evaluated in terms of classification accuracy, which produced satisfactory results towards the considered olfactory classes.