Cancelling Odors with White Smell

Nov-05-14 A pair of brothers has created a database of odor-cancelling compounds that blend to create a sort of aromatic white noise, which can cancel out undesirable odors.

The concept of a "white smell" was first presented by Noam Sobel of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. The idea behind a white smell is much like that of noise-cancelling headphones: The chemical compounds in any odor also have a set of opposing compounds, which can be combined to cancel out a particular smell.

Building off Sobel's idea, Dr. Lav R. Varshney and his brother Dr. Kush Varshney, both researchers at different institutions, created a database that identifies an odor's smell-cancelling compound. Using that database , they then built a mathematical model that will allow users to find the particular compound required to cancel out an undesirable odor. Using their model, the team created a blend of 38 different compounds could almost entirely cancel out such pungent odors as onion, sauerkraut and Japanese fermented tuna. They hope that by making it easier to identify the specific odor compounds, an actual device able to generate the "olfactory white" will be close behind.

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