A review of the use of the potentiometric electronic tongue in the monitoring of environmental systems

This paper introduces electronic tongue systems for remote environmental monitoring applications. This new approach in the chemical sensor field consists of the use of an array of non-specific sensors coupled with a multivariate calibration tool which may form a node of a sensor network. In our work, the proposed arrays were made up of potentiometric sensors based on polymeric membranes, and the subsequent cross-response processing was based on a multilayer artificial neural network model. Two cases are described: the environmental monitoring of ammonium pollutant plus alkaline ions at different measuring sites in the states of Mexico and Hidalgo (Mexico), and the monitoring of heavy metals (Cu2+, Pb2+, Zn2+ and Cd2+) in open air waste streams and rivers heading down the Gulf of Mexico. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd.