

Usually, the nose knows. But when it’s being asked to detect the sent of explosives at a crowded airport, or even potentially toxic household mold, it’s good to have an automated solution.



“It can look at odors like the human nose does, or can look at specific chemicals,” said Hugh Greville, chief executive officer of CogniScent. “The concept is taken from biology, not chemistry, which is essentially the difference. It’s a high-performance detection device for things like chemicals, explosives, and other chemical compounds but it’s different from a chemical analysis device in that it doesn’t target the chemicals itself, it targets the odors.”

Smell detectors are useful in detecting explosives and other security risks. Greville says that they have typically been expensive, between $10,000 and $15,000, but CogniScent is hoping to produce a product that is under $5,000 for the commercial market and even cheaper for consumers in the more-distant future.

“We’re looking at custom building it for general household odors,” he said. “We can identify odors associated with pet smells and kitchen smells. We’re also in the final stages of a device that detects mold and mildew. We can adapt the technology to have as many or as little sensors so we can really tailor it to a particular environment.”

According to Greville, smelling sensors have historically been complicated and clunky, which is why his company is working to make the device simple and portable. It weighs three pounds, measures about 10 inches long and runs on a battery with an AC charger.

Greville admits that there is less demand for a household smell detector, although with Americans becoming increasingly aware of toxic mold syndrome, need for the product just might change. In the meantime, CogniScent’s main customers are chemical warfare and security professionals.

On Monday, the company announced that they received a patent for a DNA-based sensor material that will be used in ScenTraK, making millions of chemical compounds detectable.

“What we’ve essentially done is develop a material that reacts to DNA,” Greville said. “This material enables us to take a library of many more sensors because with DNA being a sequence, the variations are extremely large.”

The human nose can sense and identify approximately 10,000 different smells and, according to Greville, standard polymer chemistry techniques can identify only hundreds. With the DNA-sensing material, he says that they will “essentially have access to millions of potential sensors.”