Application of Machine Learning for Fenceline Monitoring of Odor Classes and Concentrations at a Wastewater Treatment Plant

The development of low-cost sensors, the introduction of technical performance specifications, and increasingly effective machine learning algorithms for managing big data have led to a growing interest in the use of instrumental odor monitoring systems (IOMS) for odor measurements from industrial plants. The classification and quantification of odor concentration are the main goals of IOMS installed inside industrial plants in order to identify the most important odor sources and to assess whether the regulatory thresholds have been exceeded. This paper illustrates the use of two machine learning algorithms applied to the concurrent classification and quantification of odors. Random Forest was employed, which is a machine learning algorithm that thus far has not been used in the field of odor quantification and classification for complex industrial situations. Furthermore, the results were compared with commonly used algorithms in this field, such as artificial neural network (ANN), which was here employed in the form of a deep neural network. Both techniques were applied to the data collected from an IOMS installed for fenceline monitoring at a wastewater treatment plant. Cohen’s kappa and Normalized RMSE are used as specifical performance indicators for classification and regression: the indicators were calculated for the test dataset, and the results were compared with data in the literature obtained in contexts of similar complexity. A Cohen’s kappa of 97% was reached for the classification task, while the best Normalized RMSE, namely 4%, for the interval 20–2435 ouE/m(3) was obtained with Random Forest.