Kiyomi Sakakibara

Analysis of odor in car cabin

Abstract Odor in a new car cabin is caused by a complex mixture of various compounds evolved from parts and materials. To understand the odor and the compounds responsible for the odor, sensory evaluations and instrumental gas analysis were carried out. In sensory evaluations, odor intensity, pleasantness and odor characters were evaluated for 73 new cars. The odor compounds of 17 new cars were analyzed with GC and GC-MS using adsorbent tubes and canisters. From the principal components analysis of sensory evaluations, odor characters were classified into six types. The correlation between sensory evaluation results and concentrations of odor compounds identified the compounds that are responsible for the odor.

Development of a new breath alcohol detector without mouthpiece to prevent alcohol-impaired driving

A new breath alcohol detector for a driver has been developed. A mouthpiece is not required for the detection because driverpsilas breath sample is captured by an electric suction fan of the detector. The influence of an arbitrary dilution of driverpsilas expiration is extremely reduced by the calibration of alcohol concentration, using an oxygen level of driverpsilas expired breath that is measured simultaneously with the alcohol content. The detector is able to measure breath alcohol concentration rapidly and easily, compared with the current breath alcohol detectors, which require a blowing through a mouthpiece. Good accuracy has been demonstrated in an experiment with the drunk subjects.

Development of a New Breath Alcohol Detector without Mouthpiece to Prevent Drunk Driving

Breath alcohol interlock systems are used in Europe and the U.S. for drunk driving offenders. Although a certain effect has been revealed in the prevention of drunk driving, problems to be solved remain with commercialized detectors, i.e., a person taking the breath alcohol test must strongly expire to the alcohol detector through a mouthpiece for every test, more over the determination of the breath alcohol concentration requires more than 5 seconds. The goal of this research is to develop a device that functions suitable and unobtrusive enough as the interlock system. For this purpose, a contact free alcohol detector, which doesn’t require a long and hard blowing to the detector through a mouthpiece, has been developed as a tool available on board for the prevention of drunk driving. The detector consists of an electric suction fan, an alcohol sensor, and an oxygen sensor mounted in a gas flow passage. It doesn’t require a mouthpiece for the detection because driver’s expired breath is captured by the suction fan. The influence of fluctuations of the alcohol sensor signals caused by air mixing is extremely reduced by the calibration of alcohol concentration using an oxygen level of driver’s expired breath that is measured simultaneously with the alcohol content. The detector is able to measure breath alcohol concentration rapidly and easily, compared with the current breath alcohol detectors which require a blowing through a mouthpiece. Good accuracy has been demonstrated in an experiment with the drunk subjects.