CLOUD CONNECTED SMART GAS LEAKAGE DETECTION AND SAFETY PRECAUTION SYSTEM Babuprasanth.V, Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering Surya College of Engineering and Technology, Vikiravandi. Affiliated to Anna University-Chennai Email: babuprasanthforever@gmail.com Abstract - The project aim is to design and develop a cloud connected smart LPG gas cylinder platform, acting as a safety device for detecting LPG gas leak at low levels to avoid any possible accidents. It is also capable of sensing fire breakout in the area and weight of the gas in order to provide real time monitoring and alert over Internet. If an abnormal condition is detected, the device sends an alert to the smartphone app of the user and also generates an alert e-mail to other authorities. In addition to this upon detecting a gas leakage or a fire breakout, the device automatically takes safety precautionary measures, like gas valve closing, ventilation opening, fire sprinkler activation and home electrical power supply cut-off. The device connects to the internet via Wi-Fi and thus increasing the mobility of the platform within the premises of the house. A Wi-Fi capable ARM Cortex-M4 microcontroller is used to implement the system. This device offers a complete, low cost, powerful and user friendly way of real-time monitoring and remote control of gas leakages and prevention mechanisms in household and industrial areas. Keywords - Wi-Fi, Cloud, ARM Cortex-M4, LPG 1. Introduction The LPG is widely used in homes, industries and in automobiles as fuels. Both LPG and natural gas are environmental friendly they can be detected. These gases are normally stored in pressurized Steel cylinders in liquid form and vaporize at normal temperatures. With comparison of air LPG is heavier therefore it flows along the floor and also settles in low points which make it difficult to disperse. LPG is a mixture of commercial butane and commercial propane having both saturated and unsaturated hydrocarbons.lpg marketed in India shall be governed by Indian Standard Code IS-4576 and the test methods by IS-1448 [1]. Characteristics of this dangerous gas include (a) vapor pressure: The pressure inside a LPG storage vessel/ cylinder will be equal to the vapor pressure corresponding to the temperature of LPG in the storage vessel. The vapor pressure is dependent on temperature as well as on the ratio of mixture of hydrocarbons; (b) Flammability: LPG has an explosive range of 1.8% to 9.5% volume of gas in air. This is considerably narrower than other common gaseous fuels; (c) Combustion: The combustion reaction of LPG increases the volume of products in addition to the generation of heat. LPG requires up to 50 times its own volume of air for complete combustion;(d) Odour: LPG has only a very faint smell, and consequently, it is necessary to add some odorant, so that any escaping gas can vapor phase, but can, however, suffocate when in large concentrations due to the fact that it displaces oxygen;(e) Toxicity: LPG even though slightly toxic, is not poisonous in can 18
pose a serious effect if they leak. Impacts: LPG may leak as a gas or a liquid. If the liquid leaks it will quickly evaporate and form a relatively large cloud of gas which will drop to the ground, as it is heavier than air. LPG vapors can run for long distances along the ground and can collect in drains or basements Cylinders can explode if involved in a fire. The health impact this dangerous gas can cause cold burns to the skin and it can act as an asphyxiant at high concentrations. Leak cause a negative effect to the health such that the hydrocarbons and other chemicals of the LPG causes very long sleep. It also causes irritated respiratory tract, nose and eyes. The device is intended for use in household safety where appliances and heaters that use liquid petroleum gas (LPG) may be a source of risk. The system can also be used for other applications in the industry or plants that depend on LPG in their operations. 2. Existing System: LPG gas is widely used in industry, heating, home appliances and even as motor fuel. Although LPG gas is environmental friendly, it can pose a serious threat if they leak. The leakage can cause suffocation and explosion. Therefore the detection of gases has gain more interest in recent times especially in fields of safety, industry and environment. Household safety is becoming a serious issue due to the increase use of LPG gas for heating and home appliances. Most of the cooking is done using LPG, and more than 50% of the heaters use LPG. As a result accidents from gas leakage increase each and every day. The number of accidents per year keeps increasing. 3. Overall System Design The Gas Leakage Detection system overall block diagram as shown in figure 1. 19
Figure 1.Gas Leakage Monitoring and Safety Precaution system This project needs capable microcontroller with Internet source. So we are implementing CC3200, a single chip Wi-Fi microcontroller from Texas Instruments. It includes a high performance ARM Cortex-M4 processor subsystem running at 80 MHz and a Wi-Fi subsystem. The Wi-Fi subsystem consists of a dedicated ARM MCU, an 802.11b/g/n radio, baseband, and MAC with powerful crypto engine for fast, secure Internet connection. CC3200 chip supports Station, Access Point and Wi-Fi Direct modes. It also supports WPA2 personal and enterprise security and WPS 2.0. Multiple provisioning methods are supported including Smartconfig, AP mode and WPS. It includes embedded TCP/IP stack and multiple Internet protocols for easy web access. It consumes very low power and can run for more than a year from a single coin-cell battery. Features of system hardware: a) Live-Monitoring and Control The smartphone app can show the amount of LPG gas remaining, present room temperature other device status. These data are updated every few seconds providing real-time live monitoring. In addition to this, the actuators connected on the device can be controlled from the smartphone app giving additional benefits for the user. 20
b) On-Demand Automatic Reordering Facility If the device is configured in automatic reordering mode, whenever the gas level comes below a certain threshold, the device automatically sends a gas cylinder requesting e-mail to the gas vendor or gas distributor [10]. The user must save the e-mail address of the gas distributor before enabling this feature. c) Low Weight Alert Every time when a new gas cylinder is delivered, the user must press a button on the device which starts the process of measuring the weight of the cylinder and if it detects low weight cylinder, which means a low fuel content, it will immediately alert the user smartphone app about this as well as send an e-mail alert to the gas agency company to register this case. This is a useful application in finding and avoiding a low weight gas cylinder at the time of delivery. d) Actuators A servo motor is used to control the gas valve position, whereas DC fan motor mechanism acts like a ventilation/exhaust fan [4]. Another DC electrical motor will do the work of a fire sprinkler motor. All these motors are controlled using appropriate PWM signal generation. An AC relay circuitry is used cut-off the mains electrical supply. e) Local Audio Alarm A loud beep alarm sound is generated intermittently to alert the neighbouring people. f) Device User Interface status. Notification LED s are used to indicate Wi-Fi provisioning and cloud server connection g) IoT Cloud Blynk Figure 2. Blynk-Cloud Platform 21
The cloud is responsible for authorizes the hardware device and the smartphone app. It enables the communication between the smartphone app and the hardware device to handles all the data translation and data management between them [2]. There are many cloud platforms available. In our case, we are going to use Blynk cloud server and Blynk smartphone app for its ease of use and simplicity. The connection to the internet is based on Wi-Fi [3]. The project hardware has to be registered with the Blynk server shown in Fig.[2]. An authentication token is issued by the server while creating the project. This token will be used as a unique identifier that allows connecting the hardware to the smartphone app. The cloud is capable of managing all forms of communication, between device to device, device to server and server to web application over internet. The Blynk server will be running a custom protocol for this communication and the Blynk library provided handles that. h) Smartphone App Blynk Figure 3.Blynk App The smartphone app shown in Fig.[3] allows the user to monitor and control the device from a remote place. The smartphone GUI is created using Blynk app that is readily available for download for both Android and ios. Blynk is a smartphone app that allows the developer to create a custom UI according to the application requirements [9]. It leverages the resources of a smartphone and provides a set of widgets that helps to create the custom user interface. 4. System Software Design The Software integrated with Gas Leakage Detection System uses Energia which is an open Source electronic prototyping platform with the goal to bring the Wiring and Arduino framework to the Texas Instruments [8]. System software is composed of embedded c language and application program. The application is mainly categorized into two sections which are connect and communication with Blynk, Gas Leakage Detection coding [7] and safety precaution measurement and control coding. 22
5. Results Figure 4.Overall Hardware Setup In figure 4 shows the overall hardware setup and connections in corresponding port pins. 6. Conclusion LPG is a flammable gas, which has the potential to create a hazard. Therefore it is important that the properties and safe handling of LPG are understood and applied in the domestic and commercial/industrial situations. So we developed a prototype of an automatic system that constantly monitors the gas leakage status with the help of the sensors. This data is made available on cloud through real time feed over the internet. Gas sensor senses the gas leakage and takes precautionary measures automatically in the house. It also rebooks whenever the gas level gets low through email. Here using this concept one can live without any fear of hazards and reduce the time due to automatic rebooking. References [1] Source Wikipedia. [2] Perera, C. and Liu, C.H. The Emerging Internet of Things MarketPlace from an Industrial Perspective: A Survey, IEEE Transaction on Emerging Topics on Computing, 2013. [3] Soliman, M and Abiodun, T. Smart Home: Integrated Internet of Things with Web Services and Cloud Computing, IEEE international Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science, 2013, pp. 317-320. 23
[4] Chung.W and Lee.D, Real time muti-channel gas leak monitoring system using CPLD chip, Sensors and Actuators B, Vol. 77, pp. 186-189, 2001. [5] Evans,D. The Internet of Things How the Next Evolution of the Internet Is Changing Everything. [6] Huang.H, Bainand Zhu.H. S, A Greenhouse Remote Monitoring System Based on GSM, in Proc. of IEEE International Conference on information management, pp. 357-360, 2011. [7] Murvay,P. Silea,I. A Survey on gas leak detection and localization techniques, Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries, vol. 25, no. 6, pp. 966-973, Nov. 2012. [8] Energia, http://www.energia.nu/ [9] Blynk, http://www.blynk.cc/ [10] Chen.L, Nugent.C.D and Wang.H, A Knowledge-Driven Approach to Activity Recognition in Smart Homes, IEEE Trans. on Knowledge and Data Eng., pp. 961 974, 2012. 24