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During the past
two decades, hundreds of potential odorants have been reported in the
literature for CAFO odor sources. However, recent work by these
researchers as well as others suggests that from this very large suite
of ‘potential’ odor contributors, community odor complaints (i.e. at
distance from the CAFO sources) may be largely driven by a relatively
small number of chemicals drawn from this very large field. However, the
concept of such prioritization relative to downwind odor impact has not
been without controversy within the industry. This controversy has
ranged from complete denial that any such prioritization of key odorants
is definable to apparent differences with regard to the minimum size,
odorant composition or simply the impact priority ranking of the
odorants within the critical subset. Establishing that a consensus
subset of priority odorants is definable for this application is
essential if sensory ‘only’ based monitoring protocols are to be
successfully translated to instrument based (i.e. with sensory
oversight) alternatives.
The prioritization of odor emissions from CAFO sources
and increased understanding of how this prioritization impacts sampling
and analysis strategies has been at the center of the on-going
collaborative efforts. For example, the first objective of the current
Phase I USDA SBIR project is to confirm or disprove the results of
previous odorant prioritization results which indicate that p-cresol may
be the single most prominent odorant emission from these CAFO sources
(i.e. with respect to distance downwind community impact). If proven
correct, such confirmation greatly increases the importance of the
second objective of the same study which is the development of
alternatives to the industry standard Tedlar bag for whole-air odor
sampling. This importance is driven by recent studies verifying the
rapid loss of p-cresol and other high priority semi-volatile odorants
when utilizing Tedlar and other plastic bags for whole-air odor
sampling.
A number of past and future technical papers, posters,
reports and journal manuscripts have emerged from the collaborative
efforts of Don Wright, founder and President of Microanalytics; Dr.
Jacek Koziel, Assistant Professor at ISU; Dr. David Parker, Associate
Professor at West Texas A&M University and the numerous associates from each of these
organizations. Among the related publications and technical papers are
the following:
List of Publications
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