There has been growing concern over the emissions of formaldehyde and VOCs from automotive interior materials, as these could have an important impact on the in-vehicle air quality (IVAQ) of automotive vehicles. Odor along with VOCs refers to the automotive interior smell emitted directly or indirectly from any part of an automotive interior, based on human olfactory senses and a comfort evaluation of vehicle quality. The objective of this paper is to compare the odor intensity using GC/MS analysis method and odor sensory test in accordance with ISO 12219-2. For the compounds having low odor threshold value and high VOC concentration, it was found that there was the same tendency in each field of odor whether the instrument analysis method or the odor sensory test method was used.

The correlation analysis between odor sensor and air dilution olfactometry method with odor emission facilities was performed for the real-time evaluation of odor emitted from the 13 facilities. The total correlation was less significant for all facilities due to various emission characteristics of odor. The correlation for the individual facility, however, showed a higher correlation coefficient (R=0.7371~0.9897). Especially, the strong correlation (above 0.9) was observed for the industry type with the odor characteristics like tobacco, styrofoam, acetic acid, and burning smell. The repeated odor measurements using the odor sensor showed good reproducibility with the mean relative standard deviation of 5.06%. The odor sensor could be useful tools for identifying and evaluating odor with an olfactometry in field, if the use and proofreading of the odor sensor are improved by a standardized method.

In this study, odors in N industrial complex in Incheon city were measured by using air dilution olfactory method, odor sensor and instrumental analysis method. Three industry categories which are plating industry, equipment manufacturing industry and petrochemical manufacturing industry were classified and the correlation of data was evaluated based on the measurement result. The correlation coefficient between the air dilution olfactory method and the odor sensor device utilizing method in 69 points was 0.562. The correlation coefficients in the classified industry categories were observed 0.889 in the plating industry, 0.723 in the equipment manufacturing industry and 0.832 in the petrochemicals manufacturing industry. It shows that when the correlation coefficient is over 0.75, they have a strong correlation. In this result, we could identify the ease of availability of the correlation using industry classification.