Evolving odour management: Innovations, regulations, and community trust

Industry experts Chaim Kolominskas, Head of Mining & Industrial, and Danny Craggs, Customer Success Manager and Technical Specialist, both at Envirosuite, will explore the transformation of odour management practices, the role of emerging technologies, and the most effective strategies for mitigating risks in their upcoming webinar: "Best-Practice Odour Management Strategies: Avoiding Pollution Notices in Australia and New Zealand," taking place on March 19 at 12 PM AEDT.

Ahead of the event, Smart Water Magazine spoke with both experts to gain insights into the key challenges facing the sector and what attendees can expect from the online seminar.

How have traditional odour management methods evolved in response to the increasing regulatory scrutiny and the need to rebuild community trust?

More modern technology, more than anything else has sped up the time it takes to understand that there is an issue and then diagnose its root cause with more confidence

Chaim Kolominskas: Traditional methods involve a lot of physical movement of people – for example, regulators physically inspecting a site or industry sending people out to walk the perimeter or driving to the source of an odour complaint to try and verify what is happening. Unfortunately, odour issues are so transient that by the time they get there, the problem is gone. So, we end up with a situation where it’s unclear who caused the issue, and whether the observation or complaint is legitimate. More modern technology, more than anything else has sped up the time it takes to understand that there is an issue and then diagnose its root cause with more confidence.

In your experience, which proactive measures have proven most effective in preventing offsite odour issues and maintaining credibility with both regulators and local communities?

Chaim Kolominskas: Two areas of technology have delivered a step change in how these issues are managed. The first is providing a common space for the community, regulator, and industry to engage in odour incidents as they occur. Simply opening up the data through more public portals and managing the issue from the same set of information has improved the relationship between all stakeholders by leaps and bounds.

Advancements in cloud-based data processing and modelling techniques mean that it is now also possible to understand the root cause of an issue in near real-time and even predict issues before they occur, providing an opportunity to avoid them entirely.

Could you share an example where a particular odour management strategy not only mitigated an incident but also delivered operational or financial benefits to a facility?

Modern odour management systems can simultaneously deliver environmental compliance, operational efficiency, and significant cost savings

Danny Craggs: An example that stands out to me is a customer of ours that had implemented a network of real-time H2S sensors across key areas of their treatment plant, combined with targeted alerting systems to notify of emerging odour events. The customer was sharing a story with one of our team members about the time saved from their previous, more traditional methods when they provided a fantastic insight regarding how this network had led to the diagnosis of a potentially very serious event. In this event, higher than typical airborne concentrations of H2S were observed by the real-time monitors surrounding the inlet works. A call was made to a nearby operator who investigated and subsequently found that the dosing pumps had failed at a terminal pumping station which was leading to increased septicity. They were able to action this without significant septicity entering the plant, potentially leading to consent compliance issues. 

This case demonstrates how modern odour management systems can simultaneously deliver environmental compliance, operational efficiency, and significant cost savings by preventing equipment damage and regulatory penalties."

What role do emerging technologies and innovative practices play in the future of odour management, and how can operators balance these innovations with current operational realities?

Danny Craggs: The reality of a high-paced and typically under-resourced operation is that the effectiveness of a technology in odour or any environmental management is greatly limited by the amount of additional attention and resources that are required to implement it.

Early technologies have been focused on additional data collection, which solves a knowledge gap but adds a significant workload to Environmental Teams. I believe that emerging Technologies must focus on providing insights that directly support decision-making on site, allowing operators to confidently make decisions to support odour management and community engagement. For example, using wind flow modelling to provide automated source analysis so that incident triaging work is targeted to the right area and stakeholders.

Given the challenges currently facing the Australian and New Zealand water sector, could you explain why Envirosuite’s upcoming webinar, 'Best-Practice Odour Management Strategies: Avoiding Pollution Notices in Australia and New Zealand,' which will take place on Wednesday, March 19^th, is particularly timely and beneficial for stakeholders in the industry?

Chaim Kolominskas: In the 26 years that I’ve been an Environmental Engineer, environmental regulations have only become more stringent in Australia and New Zealand – and we expect that trend to continue. Lately, we’ve seen some severe penalties handed out in Australia related to odour management. Australia and New Zealand have a strong community in odour science, so it’s a great time to talk about existing and emerging technologies that could help people better manage the odour management challenges that they are facing today.