The stench of various sources has become a complex issue that all governments must face and solve. n-Butanol is often used as an odor intensity reference for daily air quality monitoring and evaluation. However, its odor space, including odor sensation and odor effect, is still not fully understood, especially in wide concentration ranges. This study described n-butanol odor character profiles with objective descriptors. They are mostly presented as “odorless” or “offensive” at low concentrations, and frequently characterized as “chemical” or “medicinal” at high concentrations. The semantic differential shows that n-butanol odor is a negative emotional odor rather than a positive one. The principal component analysis shows that the representative factors of the n-butanol sensibility structure according to the sensibility evaluation are expressed with diverse sensibility vocabulary, and ‘esthetics’ represent its characterless nature. The good linearity between intensity and concentration, the near absence of gender difference, diverse odor types rather than a specific type, and ease with which to make a wide range of concentrations, makes n-butanol a candidate to be considered as a suitable standard odorant.

Abstract
 1. Introduction
 2. Materials and methods
  2.1 Materials and panel
  2.2 Odor character and sensibility evaluation
  2.3 Semantic differential method
 3. Results and discussion
  3.1 n-Butanol odor intensities and odor characterprofiles at different concentrations
  3.2 Sensory descriptors evaluation according to nbutanolconcentration
  3.3 Characteristics of sensibility structure accordingto n-butanol concentrations
 4. Conclusion
 References

• 홍성주(대전대학교 환경공학과) | Sung-Joo Hong (Department of Environment Engineering, Daejeon University)
• Hui LI(대전대학교 환경공학과)
• 김선태(대전대학교 환경공학과) | ·Sun-Tae Kim (Department of Environment Engineering, Daejeon University) Corresponding author