9 – Predictive perfumery: What does Kao’s latest fragrance research mean for perfumers?
In February, researchers at Kao Corporation developed a method to predict odour intensity, a skill previously dependent on the experience of perfumers.
The development of the technology was the result of a project by the firm’s Sensory Science Research Laboratory, which compiled a database of 314 commonly used fragrance ingredients.
The database of olfaction characteristics allowed the scientists to develop a method that can predict the odour intensity based on the concentration of perfumery raw materials (PRMs) present in a gas sample.
Data was obtained from an evaluation testing performed by 18 perfumers and researchers, who scored the intensity of samples emitted from a fragrance diluter with different gas concentrations.