Nuevo artículo «Application of an optoelectronic nose for the monitoring and modeling of composting dynamics»
An optoelectronic nose system has been developed for monitoring the composting process. This system consists of a set of optical and electrochemical sensors, including two MQ-type sensors and 14 optical sensors, incorporating various indicators and inorganic supports such as UVM-7, alumina, and silica. The system does not require sampling form the compost pile, since it works with the volatile compounds generated during composting. It was applied to the evaluation of key composting parameters such as oxidizable organic carbon, total carbon, moisture content, total organic matter, total nitrogen, including electrical conductivity, and pH. Principal Component Analysis confirmed the system’s ability to distinguish between different stages of the composting process. Partial Least Squares regression and neural networks models offer satisfactory predictive performance with relative errors in the 1–5 % range, depending of the parameter and the data analysis methodology. The results indicate that the developed optoelectronic nose is an efficient and accurate tool for real-time monitoring of the composting process, providing valuable information on process dynamics and allowing real-time adjustments.