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Adsorption of odour molecules

Smell molecules stick to surfaces rather than dissolving into them. It explains why two shirts worn identically smell differently — and it does not, yet, explain the open tub of bicarbonate.

In detail

An odour is a molecule small and light enough to leave a surface and reach a nose. Adsorption is what happens when one sticks to a solid surface instead: it is held at the boundary rather than dissolved into the bulk, and while it is held, it is not being smelled. THE EVIDENCE HERE IS ABOUT FABRIC, and it is direct. Shirts worn for the same intense session and then incubated smelled significantly less pleasant and more intense in polyester than in cotton, across every quality a trained panel assessed. Part of that is microbial. Part is physical, and the paper says so: cotton, being largely cellulose, has a high adsorbing capacity and HOLDS volatile odour molecules, while polyester adsorbs them poorly and therefore RELEASES more. The counter-intuitive consequence is that the fibre which holds odour smells less. WHAT THIS RECORD DOES NOT COVER, deliberately: how much odour an open dish of bicarbonate, charcoal or coffee grounds takes out of a fridge or a car. That has been asked of this catalogue seven times and is still unanswered, because the register holds no source it has READ on adsorption as a general surface phenomenon — only this one, about fibre.

Why

Sources for this page

Sources

  1. Microbial Odor Profile of Polyester and Cotton Clothes after a Fitness Session

    Applied and Environmental Microbiology, American Society for Microbiology, 2014 · Scientific literature

    Relied on for: That cotton, being largely cellulose, has a high adsorbing capacity and holds volatile odour molecules, whereas polyester adsorbs them poorly and so releases more of them, and that polyester shirts smelled significantly less pleasant and more intense than cotton after the same session. (states this directly)

    Verification: a person has read the passage relied on.

    Read on — Design, odour-panel results and community fingerprinting. Authors: Callewaert, De Maeseneire, Kerckhof, Verliefde, Van de Wiele, Boon. Supports a narrower statement — our claim was reduced. This supports the mechanism and the fabric difference, and specifically DOES NOT support the thing the intent literally asks — why the smell survives a wash. The paper studied worn and incubated shirts, not laundered ones. CleaningHQ therefore explains why synthetic sportswear smells worse and why sweat itself is not the smell, and records the after-washing part of the question as not answered by this source rather than filling it with the widely repeated claims about detergent residue and fabric softener, which nothing in the register supports.

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