thomas hubert
   Yesterday, we were informed by the CEN that the 15th on November 2017 Dr. Thomas Hübert passed away after a very short illness. Dr. Thomas Hübert worked at the Federal Institute of Materials Research and Testing (BAM) and he was member of several groups dealing with instrumental odour monitoring such as the Working Group (WG) 41 of the Technical Committee 264 of the CEN.

   Dr. Hübert was activily involved in the WG41 and he was also the coordinator of the German mirror group. The picture on the left was taken in Berlin in August last year, during the last meeting of the WG. Dr. Hübert (in the middle) was a very active person and he took part on many decisions of this group. It is a great loss for his family and friends and also for the "odour" family.

wg41 berlin meeting  Two points of view. Two ways of seeing calibration of Instrument Odour Monitors (in short here, o-sensors). The 29th and 30th of August, the Working Group (WG) 41 committed to the new standard on o-sensors, met in Berlin, Germany to discuss a bit more about the text. This time, there were some very hot discussions on the interesting issue of o-sensor calibration. The tense atmosphere was broken from time to time by the pause for coffees, but all in all, everybody was enjoying the fascinating discussions being hold in the meeting room of the Institute for Materials Research and Testing in Berlin.

   Like in tennis matches, the ball went from one side to the other side of the court. The question is the following: Could a non-specific o-sensor be used on any application? That is, could an o-sensor that is performing fine in a composting site, be used also in an oil refinery? In that case, is there any way to prove that the quality of the results is transferable? should we define procedures to calibrate o-sensors on site? Which is the Certified Reference Material (CRM) to calibrate the o-sensor? is it possible to design a CRM for quality procedures? These and more questions were addressed during these 2-day meetings.

the odour talks guillot

   In October 2016 we organized the first Odour Talks. The idea was to select key experts in several fields of odour management and to let them present a work of interest on the subject. To make this experience available to the rest of the world, we did a webcast online of the Talks. Some people subscribed to the webcast sessions and they could do online questions to the speakers. A few months after this experience, we have decided to make the videos available to everyone, so here you have the first Odour Talk by Mr. Jean-Michel Guillot.

   Mr. Guillot is professor at the École de Mines d’Alès in France. He has published over 50 papers on international journals and conference proceedings and he is involved in almost any initiative related with the management of odours in Europe. To date he is a member of the CEN Working Group 41 that is dealing with instrumental odour monitoring (aka e-noses). We had the pleasure of listening to what he has to say about e-noses in the Odour Talks.

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