Dec 4

Written by: PAEHolmes News
Friday, 4 December 2009 4:34 PM

 

PlumeXpert, PAEHolmes’ real-time emissions management system, has made its first moves into the European market. It has been selected to provide a real-time odour management capability in an industrial city on the Mediterranean where a variety of odorous industries exist near residential communities. The local government is concerned about the level of community complaints and wants to better understand where complaints are coming from and to do this in a timely way so that problems can be better managed.
 
This is the first of several prospects to materialise for plumeXpert in the European market. One of the primary applications of the web-based system in the new project is to provide rapid response to complaints. The system is designed to provide a continuous modelled picture of odour plumes from the main industries in the region and to store this information along with weather and complaints information.
 
There are times when the wind direction is not obvious or is variable, and so a technique using detailed weather data is needed to ‘sniff out’ the source of the problem. As soon as the time and location of a complaint is entered into the system, an instant mapping of the path taken by the odour plume displays on the screen and points to the most likely source of the complaint. The backtrack function also provides a timestamp along the odour plume’s path, so the time at which the problem odour was released can be estimated to help in troubleshooting the cause. All this takes only a few minutes from the time of receiving the complaint.
 
Over time, the accumulated database will allow the authorities to build up a picture of the most common sources of complaints and lead to better control actions.
 

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