Landfill site is source of smell

THE mystery surrounding the cause of the foul stench that has been pervading the Otford area has finally been solved.

Waste management firm Cory Environmental has held its hands up to the stink and admitted it has been coming from its landfill site at Greatness Quarry.

The smell has been making the lives of Otford residents and workers on the nearby Vestry Estate a misery for some time.

Sue Burgess, director of Weald Refrigeration, which operates from the Vestry Estate, said: "It's like having your head in a dustbin. It's rotting rubbish – very strong.

"We've had to shut the factory doors and windows."

Barbara Darby, who lives in The Butts, said: "It's not pleasant. It's been going on for some time.

"I would like it stopped."

Cory spokesman Lynne Cure explained the organisation was carrying out work on the site in preparation to drill for gas.

It intends to extract this to generate electricity.

"We took a number of measures to minimise odour while this work was being carried out, including increasing our odour control equipment, only working in areas which could be uncovered, worked and recovered in a day, and not working on days when the wind was in the direction of the estate," she said.

"Unfortunately due to the extremely hot, humid and still weather conditions last week, some odour was experienced on the estate and we apologise to residents for this."

She added the work would be completed tomorrow.

The Environment Agency is responsible for issuing licences to companies who operate landfill sites.

Spokesman Lucy Harding said complaints had been received about Greatness Quarry.

"The site has been doing some engineering work to move waste from one part of the site to another, and although odour suppression is being used, there does still seem to be a problem during this warm spell of weather," she said.

"The work is essential to meet environmental control and planning permission requirements and is only scheduled for a short period of time."

Cory dumps up to 175,000 tonnes of waste every year at the site and last month was given permission to extend its operation until 2015.

Ms Cure explained when Kent County Council originally granted planning permission for the site back in 2002, Cory was allowed to landfill for 10 years.

Work did not actually start until 2005 and the recent extension effectively allowed Cory to recover the three years lost be operating until 2015.

More odour complaints pour in to Amaizeingly Green

A spate of complaints from residents living near the Amaizeingly Green ethanol plant over the Civic Holiday weekend are being investigated.

"We take all community complaints very seriously and we review and investigate each one very carefully -not because we have to, but because we want to," said General Manager Martin Kazmir. "We want to get things right and the information we receive from the community is very helpful to us as we stabilize our plant's operations. The more detail we get in terms of describing noises and odours enables us to pinpoint where we have potential issues that we need to address."

Kazmir said the plant's Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) inspector spent the weekend following up on the complaints with residents.

The inspector reported an intermittent corn-drying odour on Aug. 2 and on the morning of Aug. 4.

"As part of the company's complaint response protocol, AGP also conducted a thorough assessment of all processes and equipment as the complaints began to come in and concluded that the plant was operating as normal, other than those periods where specific pieces of equipment were shut down for repairs," said Kazmir. "We could not confirm with absolute certainty that the corn-drying odour was a result of repairs that had to be made to the mill or the yeast dryer, and we continue to monitor our operations very closely in conjunction with the MOE. What we do know is that our facility did not appear to be the source of noise issues that were brought to our attention by some of our neighbours."

A news release from the company said the MOE noise limits for the area around the plant are 50 decibels during the day and 45 dB at night. The ambient background noise (from traffic on the highway, etc.) was measured at 55 dB.

"This same report also assessed the noise generated by the plant, which was found to be 48 dB during the day and 42 dB during the night," stated the release. "While yet to be confirmed by the MOE, these measurements indicate the sound emissions from the AGP facility are in compliance with the MOE noise limits.

Kazmir was reluctant to say the complaints had no validity. Instead, he said the company will continue to follow up on all complaints as part of a community relations and engagement strategy.

"We have been working closely with the MOE to ensure that we are doing our due diligence and following a systematic process throughout the start-up period to ensure that every process and piece of equipment we put in place is working the way it should," said Kazmir.

The plant received at least six complaints regarding noise and odour during the six weeks it was shut down, Kazmir confirmed.

Peter Case, the spokesperson for the East End Environmental Action Committee, disputed the information coming from the plant.

"Noise levels from the plant are variable and inconsistent," said Case. "They are frequently characterized by short, noisy bursts. Others are continuously loud hums or roars -- sometimes made louder because of wind direction. The MOE has frequently verified these noises."

"Excessive noise tends to be a problem for many residents during the night, forcing people to close windows," said Case. "Traffic flow is at a minimum during that time. Two provincial acts specify that industries that make it impossible for homeowners to enjoy the normal use of their properties are in contravention of the act."

MOE spokesperson Jason Lehouillier said the ministry did have an officer respond to complaints on Aug. 2. In addition, the Ministry has staff making odour and noise observations on a daily basis through the end of August.

Case continues to remain doubtful the plant is fixed.

"Residents in the east end know full well that odours have yet to be corrected. We can smell them," he said. "So, claims by Amaizeingly Green that it is shut down when it receives some complaints are regarded by most residents as simply diversions.

"They are miniscule moments in time compared to the overall experiences of residents," said Case. "The now-familiar odours being experienced by residents come from the direction of the ethanol plant. As far as we know, there's nothing to suggest other sources."

Vopak explains reason for 'unbearable' odour

By GENEA NOEL

Freeport News Reporter

genea@nasguard.com

Two weeks after residents in the Pinder's Point area complained of the unbearable odour emanating from Vopak Terminal Bahamas, the company has responded blaming a quantity of light oil for the pungent smell.

Vice President Max Sweet-ing released a press statement to The Freeport News yesterday after reporters received many complaints from residents of the area about the intolerable smell that caused many of them to temporarily vacate the area.

Sweeting said that after an intensive investigation on the odour, it was revealed that its source was the result of a quantity of light oil flushed out of the terminal's waste water system last month by a combination of rain water and water from the hydro-testing of one of their newly built tanks.

He said the oil has since been successfully treated in their Skimmer System and pumped to the recovered oil tankage.

"Vopak Terminal Bahamas is implementing a new environment management plan, which calls for the redesign of our Storm Water and Waste Water Treatment systems to more effectively handle these situations in the future," the statement read.

Despite Vopak's efforts, when The Freeport News contacted residents yesterday, they reported that the odour was still extremely strong, making their living conditions difficult.

Residents first reported the foul disturbance to the media on Sunday August 2, when they claimed that the smell was causing them much discomfort and even made some feel ill.

When the news team visited the area to investigate, the smell was overwhelmingly strong in the area.

One resident, Thelma Dean, who has lived in the area from 1968, said that there have always been different odours coming from the plant, but this time it was almost unbearable.

"This one, it was strong. It smelled like oil and I had to put my hand over my mouth. I felt upset," she reported.

Another resident, who declined to give his name, said the smell was so bad it prevented him from sleeping well for the past few nights.

"It was just terrible. You know how it is when you're wanting fresh air and you can't get it? It's a problem to sleep when it's like that," he said.

He also expressed concerns about potential health hazards that the odour could cause for residents.

"You don't really know whether the scent could kill you or not. You're breathing in stuff that's not really good for your health and ... I feel as if something should be done about it so that we would be able to live in a clean environment."

Other residents also complained that even as the smell continues to cloud the area, no one from Vopak offered to come into the community to explain what was going on or why the scent was so strong.

In the statement, Vopak officials apologized for the disturbance caused to its Pind-er's Point neighbours and as-sured that the facility will continue to be vigilant in its efforts to prevent such unfortunate incidents from reoccurring in the future.

"We wish to assure our neighbours that the safety, health and welfare of those persons working within our facility and in the industrial park, and those living in the surrounding communities are our highest priorities," the statement said.

‘electronic nose’ for preventing development of unpleasant foot odour

The first step for preventing the development of unpleasant foot odour is to get to the root of the problem, the cause of smelly feet. Using an objective, sensor-driven system for assessing perspiration odour, scientists at the Hohenstein Institute, the Test and Research Institute Pirmasens (PFI) and the Department of Measurement Technology at the University of the Saarland have made a major stride towards achieving this aim. The structural characteristics of shoes (for example, materials used for the uppers and soles) and stockings (e.g. fibres) play a special role in the development of odours, adding to the contribution the wearer of the shoe makes to the development of smells due to the bacterial decomposition of perspiration. Until now, product development with respect to sensory properties, such as smell, could be done only through a process of trial and error by means of costly tests using human probands. A system of sensors for the objective assessment of foot perspiration odour developed under the auspices of the research programme AiF (German Federation of Industrial Research Associations) - No. 201 ZN now provides a future means of avoiding customer returns and the subsequent re-designing and restructuring of shoes. During the research project, human test subjects, or probands, wore different combinations of shoes and stockings under realistic conditions in order to generate genuine foot perspiration odour. Throughout the duration of the experiment, in parallel research, the odours generated were objectively assessed with the aid of an “electronic nose” and subjectively evaluated by a “sensory panel” (a group of human test sniffers). In what is known as the “electronic nose”, diverse semiconductor gas sensors reacted to volatile substances, such as those generated during the process of bacterial decomposition of perspiration. The substances' adsorption on or reaction with the surfaces of the semiconductors changes their conductivity, and a measurement signal is generated. The human sniffers augmented the data gathered by the sensors with a very fine and welldifferentiated sense of smell. The aim of the research project was to correlate the measurement data gathered by the sensors with the subjective odour evaluations given by the “sensory panel” of human sniffers, by placing them in reference to one another. This goes some way towards sparing subjective odour evaluations in future, because perspiration odour can be quantitatively assessed using measurements taken by the “electronic nose” alone. Through this innovation, major savings in time and money can be achieved during the development of shoes, stockings and socks. The research project has shown that in principle, it is possible to correlate these two data sets using complex mathematical and statistical processes (e.g. linear discriminant analysis). Yet the accuracy that has been achieved through correlation of the amount of data that has been gathered to date is still not great enough to do without the odour evaluations of the “sniffer panel” entirely. This aim can be achieved through further measurements with the “electronic nose” and by optimising the evaluation of data gathered by the sensors. Applying the measurement principles that have been developed in this project to other garments and their materials (e.g. T-shirts, underwear, shirts, blouses) is possible. Further studies are scheduled subsequent to this one.

Hohenstein Institute

Shrimp sniffing simplified

Sniffing has come a long way. In the odour industry that is. From the humble beginnings when panels of expert sniffers had only their noses to rely on, their job has become easier by the introduction of instrumental accessories, notably the gas chromatograph. Now, rather than trying to describe the odour characteristics of one particular source, such as cooked food, in its entirety, the odour contributors can be split up and characterised in their own right. This type of job was never easy, but GC certainly helped.

The output from the gas chromatograph is split to a detector and a sniffing port, so that the odour characteristics identified by the sniffer can be correlated with the GC retention time. Later developments placed several sniffing ports on the same instrument, so that a panel of experts could sniff and describe the same odour at the same time, saving much post-sniffing correlation time between individuals.

The next logical step was to insert another split from the gas chromatograph to a mass spectrometer to allow the simultaneous identification of the sniffed compounds from mass spectral library searching. Although this was a notable improvement, the use of a single GC column was often insufficient to separate all of the odorants in a complex mixture.

That led to two-dimensional GC systems (GCxGC), involving the use of two columns of different properties to effect far better separation of closely eluting components. For best performance, a sniffing port is added but this can require the use of a special interface that slows down peak elution from the second column to allow the sniffers plenty of time to sample each aroma as it emerges.

These techniques have been backed up by GCxGC/MS using the mass spectrometer rather than the sniffer to identify the compound but it remains desirable to link the odour to the compound. And herein lies a problem. How to correlate the data from the different systems so that all data for a given compound line up.

That dilemma was faced by scientists from the Swiss company Firmenich SA in Geneva, an organisation specialising in flavour and perfumery chemicals. Alain Chaintreau, Sabine Rochat and J. Egger set out to analyse the aroma of cooked shrimps, one of the more important seafoods. They too had to resort to the use of more than one instrument to dissect the complex odour.

They analysed the odour from shrimp heads cooked in water, a popular ingredient of shrimp sauces, and shrimp shell powder, which is a raw material for the food processing industry and a source of chitinase. The odour compounds were collected by the purge-and-trap headspace technique.

In the first instance, simple GC-O/MS resulted in the tentative identification of many compounds from their linear retention indices (LRIs) and olfactory descriptors held in an in-house database. However, many compounds with high odour thresholds (that could be sensed from especially small amounts) could not be identified because they were below the detection limit of the mass spectrometer.

The next step was to use a GCxGC/MS system with a time of flight (TOF) detector, with sample introduction via a SPME fibre. This set up provided excellent resolution of the aroma volatiles and many more compounds were detected. However, the LRIs were different for the two mass spectrometry systems so that it was difficult to match a peak in the GC-O/MS system with the corresponding peak in the GCxGC/MS system. To complicate matters further, the LRIs within the in-house database had been collected on a third type of instrument by unidimensional GC/MS.

The solution involved plotting the LRIs of known compounds from the GC-O/MS system against those from the GCxGC/MS system. An excellent straight-line correlation was obtained, allowing the aroma compound LRIs to be found on one system when measured on the other. In the same way, the experimental LRIs from the GCxGC/MS system were correlated to those in the database, with excellent linearity. With small error limits, the identities of many compounds were confirmed.

Three peaks that strayed from the straight line in the GC-O/MS vs/ GCxGC/MS correlation had been initially mis-assigned from their mass spectra. The LRIs from GC-O/MS were used to determine those in the GCxGC/MS system and, finally, proposals were made from the mass spectral library at the calculated indices.

Some very potent odorants, notably some heterocyclic compounds, were even below the detection limits of the more sensitive GCxGC/MS system with the TOF. Other compounds like low-molecular-mass aldehydes, were not detected so they were confirmed by preparing substituted hydrazone derivatives.

For one particular compound in the shrimp powder, identification was hampered by a poor mass spectrum due to co-elution with other compounds. It was finally solved using a third system, a GCxGC/MS with a single quadrupole mass spectrometer, a field ionisation detector and a sniffer. A special interface was in place to slow down transfer between the two columns and allow time for sniffing to take place. The compound was eventually declared to be 2-ethyl-3,5-dimethylpyrazine, a well-known and potent aroma compound.

The new retention index correlation strategy has allowed the data from three related techniques to become fully complementary. It led to the identification of many components of the complex shrimp aroma that remained unknown or unsure by the common GC-O/MS technique and should be of great value in the aroma industry.

Related Links:

• Journal of Chromatography A 2009 (Article in Press): "Strategy for the identification of key odorants: Application to shrimp aroma"

Article by Steve Down

The views represented in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of John Wiley and Sons, Ltd.

High-tech undies keep odour away for a month

Astronaut Koichi Wakata, who is returning to earth from months at the International Space Station, has revealed that he’s been sporting a brand new pair of J-Ware briefs for the last few weeks without changing.

Unlike any normal kind of underwear, the new high-tech briefs are designed by a team in Japan to be odour-free.

“I haven’t talked about this underwear to my crew members. But I wore them for about a month, and my station crew members never complained for about a month, so I think the experiment went fine,” The Christian Science Monitor quoted Wakata as saying.

Wakata reportedly drew a big laugh from his colleagues.

Due back on Earth on Friday, Wakata has said that the antistatic, flame-retardant underwear made his life in space very comfortable.

The J-Wear line is designed by textile experts at the Women’s University in Tokyo, and is said to be made of anti-bacterial, water-absorbent, odour-eliminating material.

“We’ll see the results after landing,” said Wakata.

Companies fined for releasing contaminants, odours into the air

Green Island's fellmongery and tannery, closed earlier this week, was yesterday in court admitting two charges of discharging odour to air earlier this year.

Colyer Mair Assets Ltd trades as Graeme Lowe Otago, which owns and operates the fellmongery and tannery at Main South Rd, Dunedin.

It appeared in front of Judge Gordon Whiting, of Auckland, in Dunedin yesterday, on charges brought by the Otago Regional Council.

The operation had a resource consent to discharge odours, but not any that were noxious, dangerous, offensive or objectionable beyond the boundary of the site.

Council counsel Alastair Logan said the first discharge occurred on January 15.

After complaints from residents in the area, a regional council officer detected odour which smelt like "a mixture of wet wool, burnt material and sulphur".

The second discharge was on January 23 and the council received six complaints about foul smell between 5pm and 7pm.

A council officer who investigated the odour described the smell on Main South Rd as a "sulphurous, ammoniacal, smoking, rotting meat smell" and it made her nauseous.

Colyer Mair counsel Jim Ferguson said the plant's closure was in no way related to yesterday's court appearance.

Staff's assumptions about what caused the first discharge were incorrect, which led to the second discharge.

"Immediate and extreme action was then taken."

Experts identified the sulphide scrubbers which filter the odours were the problem and the plant was shut down for one week, at a cost of $200,000, to do the work needed to replace them.

In both cases the odours did not last long or cause illness, he said.

The company had been fined $8000 for an odour discharge in 2007.

Judge Whiting said there was no deliberate attempt by the company to breach its consent and the company did "go into top gear" to address the problem.

Colyer Mair Ltd was convicted and fined on each charge $13,000, court costs $130, solicitors' fees $113.

On the first charge it was also ordered to pay regional council costs $198.30.

Ninety percent of the fee was directed to go to the regional council.

Silver Fern Farms Ltd admitted a charge of discharging contaminants, particulate matter and chemicals produced by the burning of plastic and refrigeration parts, to air from its Mosgiel site, in late September 2008.

Counsel Sally McMillan said the company regularly burnt wooden pallets and garden waste on site.

It was believed the plastic, found to be baleage wrap which the company did not use, and the refrigeration parts were put under the pallets by a third party and the employee who started the fire did not know the extra material was there.

"It was a flukey one-off situation that could have caught any company off guard," she said.

There were three other fires in the area at the time as well as discharges from domestic heating and other industry.

While the fire burnt for two hours, until the regional council arrived and asked for it to be extinguished, there was no long-lasting damage.

The company had since banned fires on its property.

Judge Whiting said the incident resulted in "rather toxic smelling and dark looking" smoke drifting slowly across Mosgiel to the coast.

The smoke had an adverse effect on visibility and amenity and while air pollution readings peaked between 8am and 11am at the same time as the fire, the fire was not necessarily the cause, he said.

SFF was convicted and fined $4000, court costs $130, solicitors' fees $113, and analyst fees $202.90.

The judge directed 90% of the fee to go to the regional council.