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by aapjesverkoper 3281 days ago
I guess that would be a system like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_chromatography%E2%80%93mas... ?
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Right, I guess I should have made my question more concise...are there electronic odor sensors? i.e. stuff small enough that can be e.g. put inside my cellphone.
As far as I am aware, the smallest available odor sensor is a trained bee or wasp. The hymenopterans are classically conditioned to extend their tongues when exposed to a particular chemical or odor profile. Then they are restrained inside a plastic cartridge, such that whenever they extend their tongues, a tiny button is pressed.

The cartridge is then loaded into a handheld device that lights an LED whenever the insect detects the odor.

Much cheaper than trained dogs, and the purely electronic detectors are not quite as robust [yet]. The downside is that you can't exactly buy it once and keep using it for the next 10 years.

Sniffer insects have been used to detect bombs, fungal blight, cancer, diabetes, pregnancy, contraband drugs, and uranium.

I thought this was all a joke, but apparently only some of it is: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hymenoptera_training
The cartridges are not mentioned in that article. I saw them on a television program. They so strongly resembled rows of schoolchildren sitting at their desks, that I half expected a bell to ring before the bees put their textbooks away and go on to learn another scent.

The commercial product is the VASOR136 by Inscentinel Ltd.

https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.269373!/file/Sniff...

Pretty small, but not cell-phone sized. https://www.amazon.com/MicrOptix-VSA-100-Analyzing-Spectroph...

Ones that detect particular contaminants can be a lot smaller, especially if they are single-use.

That's a spectrophotometer, not a GC/MS... Can you detect smelly airborne chemicals with this as well?
Reading the description, it might be for liquids instead. Anyway it won't give as much information about the molecular components as a mass spectrometer, but you can still get a good idea if there are contaminants.
Possibly.

Here is an article from MIT in 2014 detailing recent discoveries and improvements in chip tech that could allow this: http://news.mit.edu/2014/wireless-chemical-sensor-for-smartp...