Year in review - 2019

2019 saw another exciting year for the Odour Laboratory

Publications and Outreach

IWA Odour and Air Emission Conference 2019 was held in Hangzhou, China, 14-17th October. From the Odour Lab, Richard Stuetz, Ademir Prata and Fadhilah Idris attended. Prof Stuetz was co-chair of the Conference’s scientific committee and presented the opening keynote lecture. He and Dr Prata also presented at the pre-conference workshop, on “Chemical methods GC/MS and Sensory GC” and “Emission Models”, respectively. The team delivered five conference paper presentations with the contributions from our lab. 

The UNSW Odour Laboratory had a number of papers published in 2019, a selection of which are shown below:

• Barczak, R. J., Fisher, R. M., Le-Minh, N., & Stuetz, R. M. (2019). Importance of 2,4,6-Trichloroanisole (TCA) as an odorant in the emissions from anaerobically stabilized dewatered biosolids. Chemosphere, 236, 124340. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2019.07.071
• Fisher, R. M., Alvarez-Gaitan, J. P., & Stuetz, R. M. (2019). Review of the effects of wastewater biosolids stabilization processes on odor emissions. Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology, 49(17), 1515-1586. https://doi.org/10.1080/10643389.2019.1579620
• Hayes, J. E., Fisher, R. M., Stevenson, R. J., & Stuetz, R. M. (2019). Investigation of non-community stakeholders regarding community engagement and environmental malodour. Science of The Total Environment, 665, 546-556. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.02.137
• Shammay, A., Evanson, I. E. J., & Stuetz, R. M. (2019). Selection framework for the treatment of sewer network emissions. Journal of Environmental Management, 249, 109305. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2019.109305
• Andreão, W.L., Santos, J.M., Reis Jr., N.C., Prata Jr., A.A., Stuetz, R.M., (2019). Effects of flux chamber configuration on the sampling of odorous gases emissions. International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, 140, 918–930. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2019.06.029
• Kamarulzaman, N. H., Le-Minh, N., & Stuetz, R. M. (2019). Identification of VOCs from natural rubber by different headspace techniques coupled using GC-MS. Talanta, 191, 535-544. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.talanta.2018.09.019
• Kamarulzaman, N. H., Le-Minh, N., Fisher, R. M., & Stuetz, R. M. (2019). Quantification of VOCs and the development of odour wheels for rubber processing. Science of The Total Environment, 657, 154-168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.11.451

Graduates

In May 2019, Odour Laboratory Alumni Dr Nor Hidayaty Kamarulzaman was awarded her PhD for her work on the characterisation of odorous emissions from rubber processing. She is currently continuing her work at the Malaysian Rubber Board who was a partner with her thesis.

Visitors

The UNSW Odour laboratory is continuing their strong relationship with Brazilian universities with the recent visits from two researchers from the Air Quality Research Group at Federal University of Espirito Santo (UFES). Dr Bruno Furieri and Kamila Cupertino have been collaborating with Dr Ademir Prata continuing his work on the mass transfer inside enclosure devices for the sampling of odorous emissions. Doing her practicum research exchange internship on that same topic, we are at the moment hosting Thais Guerrero, also from UFES.

Our colleague Radek returned to Europe once again, ending another research stint in Australia with work characterising unknown odorants from biosolids emissions. We welcome future collaboration and the publication of the results of this ongoing work.

Projects

Strong industry engagement continued in 2019 with a number of research and consulting activities conducted over the year. These included:

• Material characterisation for food packaging,
• Emission testing of biosolids emissions,
• Siloxane characterisation of wastewater biogas,
• Characterisation of food waste storage tank emissions,
• Nuisance emissions from toilets

We look forward to continuing these relationships and working with new partners in 2020!