Odour from municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills: a study on the analysis of perception

The objective of this work was to develop a relationship between odour intensity and odour concentration by using data collected from various sensitive areas of the municipal solid waste (MSW) landfill site. A number of well-known psychophysical models (e.g., Weber-Fechner law, Steven's power law, Beidler's and Laffort's models) have been discussed that can successfully relate the perceived intensity with the odour concentration. Respective parameters for each of the models were estimated by the nonlinear Levenburg-Marquardt parameter estimation method. The overall performance of the model was tested statistically against sets of data from the olfactometry analysis. The model based on the Weber-Fechner law was ranked 1 in case of five out of nine samples and it has been found more representative of the less intense odour samples. The model based on Laffort's equation has represented the intensity-concentration relationship better with extremely low uncertainties on both parameters k1 and k2 for comparatively more intense odour samples.