Odor Monitoring and Control

National Experts:  Paul Schafer and Pat Sullivan

Odor pollution is a significant aspect of a region’s air quality and is often regulated as a nuisance. It is estimated that over 50% of air pollution complaints received by regulatory agencies involve an odor component.

SCS Engineers offers robust and comprehensive odor assessment and mitigation capabilities for industrial operations, including odor emissions sampling, odor dispersion modeling, and tracer sciences.  Our approach incorporates specialized analytical tools and field-proven technologies to determine the specific odor footprint of a facility. This information is utilized to devise effective and meaningful controls to abate impacts. Our approach is proven and effective; it has been successfully employed on numerous projects in a variety of industrial settings, including landfills and solid waste facilities, composting facilities, food processing plants, wastewater treatment plants, sewage systems, chemical manufacturing, and oil and gas production operations, to name just a few.

SCS Engineers’ professionals are experts at implementing mitigation strategies to reduce odors. We have found through experience that the perceived primary source of an odor is not necessarily the source that requires the greatest emission reduction. SCS often employs strategies to address a host of minor sources which combine to generate the offensive odor. Our mitigation strategies will sometimes utilize masking agents, but these generally do not endure to be a standalone solution. Instead, we employ chemical and physical controls and operational changes that translate into a stable and reliable abatement of odor emissions.

Recent regulations have focused on reducing landfill gas emissions (LFG) into the atmosphere since LFG can contribute to local air pollution and odors, and trace constituents in the gas may be harmful to public health. Uncontrolled release of LFG also can contribute substantially to global warming. SCS Engineers is a national leader in assessing these impacts, recommending preventative measures, and designing emission reduction systems.

Our engineers and scientists employ state-of-the-art technologies to assess your odor issues and design workable, cost-effective plans to mitigate your off-site odor impacts, including:

  • Sampling and analysis of LFG for the presence of trace volatile organic compounds
  • Air modeling of gas vents and flares for impact evaluation, risk assessment, and permitting purposes
  • Odor-panel testing
  • Short- and long-term ambient air monitoring in neighborhoods near and down-wind from landfills
  • Air monitoring during excavation of old landfill sites
  • Design of facilities to capture and treat hazardous and odorous elements in LFG
  • Preparation of health and safety plans for landfill workers and public health protection
  • Source isolation from multiple possible sources using inert tracers
  • Off-site impacts and source-receptor verification using tracers