The year 2022 is ending, and a lot has happened in odour management. So, as usual, we will review the news of this year, 2022.
One of the most relevant news with which the year started was the entry into force of the new German air quality law. This regulation finally included odour as a parameter to evaluate the Air Quality. From December 2021, Germany's regulatory limit of 1 odour hour in ambient air cannot exceed more than 876 hours a year in residential areas. Also, for industrial and rural areas, the limit of 1 odour hour can be at most 1314 hours yearly.
Until now, many environmental authorities claimed that they managed their air quality. The regulators utilise electronic panels clearly visible on the streets for this purpose. These electronic panels may also report on odour in the future;–). At least in Germany.
Throughout this year, we have been publishing all the papers, videos and presentations we recorded at the conference we organised last year. We had five fantastic keynote speakers from 5 different continents. We have now finished publishing all the papers and videos of this conference and compiled them in one post for your convenience.
The usually active open-access journal Atmosphere of MDPI published in February a new exciting book on Environmental Odour edited by the Odour Experts Günther Schauberger, Martin Piringer, Chuandong Wu and Jacek Koziel. This book was a reprint of articles previously published in other special issues, and it is available to download for free here.
From time to time, the Water Environmental Federation (WEF) organises webcasts related to odour management. In March, WEF carried out the webcast titled "Odor Measurement and Monitoring – From the Basics to the Latest". The event commenced with an introduction to the science of odour management. Following that part, there was a brief description of the latest advances in this field. Probably the WEF staff recorded this webcast, but the link to purchase it is not available yet. The main editor of olores.org spoke about recent advancements in the measurement of annoyance, odour sensing, ambient air monitoring, and modelling. Other engaging presentations were carried out by the Odour Experts Ray David of Greeley & Hansen and Alejandro Caicedo-Ramirez of V&A Consulting Engineers. The well-known Odour Expert Mark Perkins coordinated the session.
Also, in March, after 17 meetings and nine years, the European standard EN 13725:2022 was finally published and available for everyone. Most of the work addressed uncertainty, so the revised text introduces new concepts, such as the Secondary Odour Reference Mass (SROM). Learn more about the EN new EN 13725:2022 standard on dynamic olfactometry here. The convenor of this standard carried out a presentation on this standard, available here. Many new provisions in the new text need to be reviewed in detail. Still, one of the most impacting in the day-to-day operations of the over 400 laboratories worldwide is the requirement of the minimum recovery rates accepted for olfactometers.
A week after the WEF webcast, there was a special online session on odour management during the AIR TALKS 2022. The AIR TALKS is a series of webinars organised by the Clean Air Society of Australia and New Zealand (CASANZ). The Odour/health Special Interest Groups (SIGs) decided it was time to speak about odour and health at the beginning of April. CASANZ invited the main editor of this website to talk about recent developments in odour and health, its challenges and its outlook. Other exciting presentations were made by the Odour Experts Chris Bydder of EPA Victoria, James Hayes of the University of NSW and Viranga Abeywickrema (EPA Victoria). The well-known Odour Expert and Chair of CASANZ Odour Special Interest Group, Michael Assal, coordinated the session.
The British Columbia Water & Waste Association (BCWWA) is a not-for-profit organisation representing around 4,000 water professionals in Canada. In April, the BCWWA organised a 1-day course on the issue of odours from collection systems.
Also in April, the company Olfasense opened the registration for the annual Proficiency Test for Olfactometry in May based on EN 13725:2003. Olfasense invited laboratories worldwide to participate in this edition to confirm compliance with the performance criteria of the standard EN 13725:2003. At around the same time, InterCinD, an independent business unit of the Italian company Lab Service Analytica Srl, also opened the registration for the annual Proficiency Test for Olfactometry based, this time, on the new EN 13725:2022. Again, InterCinD invited European olfactometric laboratories to participate in this edition to confirm compliance with the performance criteria.
Also in May, the National Odour Research And Management Institute (NORMI), an Indian not-for-profit NGO, launched an initiative inviting submission of short films for its 'NORMI Short Film Competition–2022'. The competition aimed at recognising the creative efforts towards "Odour Related Issues". We have not been able to locate the winning video yet.
The system developers of the well-known high-resolution model system GRAMM/GRAL released in May the GRAL and GUI version 22.03 with plenty of bug fixes and new features. A few months later, they also presented their new website.
We also learnt in May that the University IMT Mines Alès started a project titled "Perception of Potentialities or Existence of Odour Nuisances in the Environment: Comparison of Approaches based on Objective or Subjective Factors". This important project will try to create an equation based on the FIDOS approach to evaluate odour annoyance. If you want to know more about this topic, Jean-Michel briefly discusses this exciting project in our Odour Talk here.
The International Symposium on Olfaction and Electronic Nose (ISOEN) took place as planned in Aveiro, Portugal, at the end of May 2022. The conference was structured in several sessions to try to fit the over 100 papers received on this occasion. This was the first conference held face-to-face in a long time after an online break during the pandemic.
EN 17628 was also published on the last day of May. This standard deals with Fugitive and diffuse emissions of common concern to industry sectors and defines five methodologies to determine diffuse emissions of VOCs into the atmosphere from industrial sources. These methods are Optical Gas Imaging (OGI), Differential Absorption Lidar (DIAL), Solar Occultation Flux (SOF), Tracer Correlation (TC), and Reverse Dispersion Modelling (RDM).
In June, the first draft of the International Handbook on the Assessment of Odour Exposure by Dispersion Modelling was released, although not for public exposure. The over 50 volunteers working on this document reached their first milestone. The first draft of this handbook has, at this stage, 291 pages of information on the topic. The group has already had 20 monthly meetings since the first meeting took place on the 27 of August 2020. This development is being led at this stage by Ms Jennifer Barclay, principal scientist of Atmospheric Science Global (ASG) in New Zealand. The former co-convenor Mr Gunther Schauberger stepped off of this initiative.
The 2022 Water Environment Association of Texas (WEAT) Collections Systems and Odor & Corrosion Specialty Conference took place on the 1 of June in Frisco, Texas. This conference was an important spot on odour from collection systems. The Collection Systems Committee and the Odor and Corrosion Management Committee of the WEAT organised the event.
In August, the Clean Air Society of Australia and New Zealand (CASANZ) organised an online webinar on three new guidances developed by EPA Victoria, Australia. The odour expert and EPA Victoria officer Chris Bydder presented a Separation Distance Guideline, a Landfill Buffer Guideline and Guidance for Assessing odour.
In August 2022, WEF opened the call for content for the coming WEF Conference on Odors and Air Pollutants 2023. This relevant conference will take place from the 16 to the 19 of May 2023 in Charlotte, NC. This time, the biennial odour conference will be co-located with the WEF Residuals and Biosolids Conference, meaning that both events will benefit from synergies and enrich both communities of experts. The programme for this exciting conference is already available here.
In September, the well-known biennial HARMO international conference on dispersion modelling took place in the Portuguese city of Aveiro. This always exciting event for air dispersion modellers came this time with a Special Session on Modelling Odour Dispersion and Exposure. The main editor of olores.org informed about the developments New International Handbook on the Assessment of Odour Exposure Using Dispersion Modelling.
In October, we organised another edition of the Odour talks 2022 on Odour Exposure & Annoyance. We broadcasted this webinar online. Five odour experts presented their points of view on how to account for odour exposure and annoyance. We recorded the webinar in case you missed it here. After the talks, there was an exciting round table coordinated by Ms Kirsten Sucker.
As many of you know, there was an active CEN group dealing with the standardisation of a procedure to validate the use of IOMS (Instrumental Odour Monitoring System) for odour measurements. After 20 meetings and over six years, the group ended the time assigned without presenting a final draft standard for voting to the Technical Committee 264 "Air Quality". In October 2022, we published that the CEN Technical Committee 264 on Air Quality re-introduced a new Work Item (WI) on the agenda. This WI re-started the standard drafting process in WG 41 with a new fresh timeline. The Italian National Standardisation body UNI is now responsible for continuing the work performed until now by the Dutch Standardization Body NEN.
The fifth Iberian Robotics Conference took place in Zaragoza, Spain, in November 2022. This time this conference brought a special session on Mobile Robot Olfaction.
At about the same time, the Italian trade fair, Ecomondo, brought an extraordinary session titled "Odour emissions: from abatement technologies to new control strategies". Unfortunately, due to an air strike, we missed the opportunity to watch the presentations, which was a pity.
Another important event in November was the 7th World Congress on Digital Olfaction of the DOS in Tokyo - Japan. This conference was postponed a few times, so everyone was eager to finally meet. The good news is that the presentations were actually recorded. The recordings and proceeding papers can be purchased here in case you missed this important event.
Also in November 2022, we learnt that the 10th IWA odour management conference organised by the University of New South Wales and CASANZ will take place on 26-27 August 2024 in Hobart, Australia. Workshops/training courses are planned to take place on Sunday, the 25 of August and site visits on Wednesday, the 28 of August.
Also in this month, the open-access journal Atmosphere announced a new Special Issue entitled "Odour in Ambient Air". Dr Martin Piringer, Prof. Dr Günther Schauberger, and Dr. Wenjing Lu serve as Guest Editors for this issue. The submission deadline is the 10 of February 2023, by the way.
As mentioned at the beginning, in November, we published all the papers, videos, powerpoints, posters, etc, presented during the 9th IWA Odour & VOC/Air Emission Conference in Bilbao, Spain, in October 2021. It took us a year to publish all this material. We did it whenever we could during our daily consultancy duties. To be honest, the papers of this conference are an impressive set of information for odour managers. The recording of videos was quite expensive, but we think that the final result was worth the effort. We have published most of the presentations of the 5 international conferences we have organised. In addition, we have made around 300 videos on odour management public and freely available for everyone in our youtube channel.
For us, a conference finishes when we publish this final post. So now we will think about organising another event, who knows where and when!
This 2023 is here and is already bringing new exciting news and we will be here, for you, one more year.
