The organizers are doing very well. There is no doubt about this, as every year more and more people are attending the Water Environmental Federation (WEF) series on odor management. There is a new record of attendance this time with 380 people from all around the world registered for this conference on Odors and Air Pollutant that took place in the last week of March.

   The WEF conferences are usually very lively and always count on a very nice array of companies dealing with odor management and control.  This time almost 40 exhibitors were showing their products and services at the conference, which is quite a bit considering this very small world of odor management people.

   A pre-Conference Workshop took place the day before the Water Environmental Federation Odors and Air Pollutants conference started. This workshop dealt with the procedures for Field Inspection of Odors in Ambient Air according to the recent standard EN 16841. This standard, will change the way odors are measured in ambient air nowadays, as it sets two reference methods to evaluate the odor impact.

   The session I dealt with Odor Measurement with two very interesting presentations on instrumental measurement of odorants and on the effect of the number of assessors on the odor threshold determination.

   Second session dealt with the impact in the Community, John Bennett and Dick Pope presented a couple of examples of how to deal with the community in cases of odor impact from two very different perspectives

   The third session dealt with innovative solutions for biosolid processing and food waste and session 4 dived directly into problems & solutions.

   A few more sessions dealt with solutions for odor control, many of them really interesting both on Monday and Tuesday and finally, session 5 dealt with Research & Optimization, also with many presentations dealing with the current trends on odor management impact in wastewater facilities.

   A few interesting mobile sessions were hold at the same time that the presentations were given in the rooms, so sometimes it was difficult to select which talk to attend as they were all interesting.

Some mobile sessions during the conference and Mr. McGinley explaining the case of two soup factories; beef vegetable and chicken noodle during his presentation about the relationship between intensity and concentration.

   On Tuesday, Mr. Charles McGinley presented a paper on the importance of intensity comparing the hypothetical case of two soup factories; a beef vegetable and a chicken noodle; each with a different intensity/concentration slope. This paper has been written together with the expert Monika Paduch and the editor of this website. Taking into account intensity is sometimes crucial in understanding some key factors that affec odour impact as it was later mentioned in several post-presentation discussions.

   Last presentation of the day dealt with the impact of the hedonic tone in the calculation of the emissions of a WWTP. The results showed the impact of the hedonic tone on the consideration of the relevant sources to be taken into account on the overall odor emission.

   Once again, many interesting networking activities took place during this successful WEF conference. There is no information yet about where the next conference will be, but we are however certain about two facts: It will be in 2 years and it will be another inspiring spot to deal with odor management.