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Some animals have a great odorous power. They explore, interpret and understand their world with such sensitivity that people enlisted in dogs to solve the crime and detect cancer on the run. Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology are now exploring the secrets of super-animal sniffers to develop an artificial chemical sensor that can be used for various tasks, from food safety to national security.
"We have turned to animals to understand what nature has already understood," said Thomas Spencer, doctoral candidate at David Hu's lab at Georgia Tech. "We apply the underlying principles we learned about these mechanisms to design a better sensor."
Spencer will present the group's latest model for an electronic nose that concentrates odors for better chemical detection at the 71st Annual Meeting of the Fluid Dynamics Division of the American Physical Society, to be held from 18 to 20 November at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Georgia.
Their work began wrongly during a competition to develop a sensor capable of identifying different varieties of cheese. Turning to nature to guide their work, they went to the Atlanta Zoo to compare how different animals sniff, from mice to elephants.
"We wanted to measure the frequency of inhalation of animals when they were trying to identify a new food source or something that interested them," Spencer said.
After reviewing the data, they found that the detection speed depends on the increase in body size. in other words, mice sniff faster than elephants. With the help of their results, they designed a custom pump that oscillates at the same frequency as the animals. The design of their device circulates the flow of air around the chemical sensor in a more controlled manner.
"These findings are important because they give us insight into the physics of sniffing," said Hu, an associate professor of mechanical engineering and biology at Georgia Tech. "This information will affect how we develop sniffing machines."
Since the smell was invisible, the team used wind tunnel experiments and computer simulations to analyze how odor particles moved through the air. In addition, they gathered information on real-time sensors to determine the variations of chemical compounds in the air, in time and in space.
Although the team initially designed the electronic nose to distinguish different varieties of cheese, the fundamentals of their device could be used in many different applications.
"It's still a relatively new study," said Spencer. "Our hope is to obtain an excerpt from this ability and to reproduce it for ourselves."
Adams Clark joined Spencer and Hu for this study. They received funding from the National Science Foundation.
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Material provided by American Physical Society. Note: Content can be changed for style and length.
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