Gas Leakage Detection and Smart Alerting

and Prediction Using IoT

Asmita Varma, Prabhakar S, Kayalvizhi Jayavel
SRM University, Kattankulathur, Chennai
{asmita_varma, prabhakar_sankar}@srmuniv.edu.in
[email protected]

Abstract visibility which can in turn cause severe accidents

and also have adverse effect on the health of people.
IoT is an expanding network of physical devices that
are linked with different types of sensors and with the In order to have a control over such conditions this
help of connectivity to the internet, they are able to paper proposes a system that uses an MQ-2 sensor
exchange data. Through IoT, internet has now which is capable of detecting gases such as H2, LPG,
extended its roots to almost every possible thing CH4, CO, Alcohol, Smoke and Propane [1]. This
present around us and is no more limited to our system is not only capable of detecting the leakages
personal computers and mobile phones. and hence presence of excess amounts of harmful
Safety, the elementary concern of any project, has not gases and alerting through audible alarms but also,
been left untouched by IoT. Gas Leakages in open or with the help of IoT, alerting the concerned authority
closed areas can prove to be dangerous and lethal. about the condition before any mishap takes place
The traditional Gas Leakage Detector Systems through a personal call and message using GSM
though have great precision, fail to acknowledge a module, an e-mail about the details of the area using
few factors in the field of alerting the people about an Ethernet Shield. The system cuts off the main
the leakage. Therefore we have used the IoT power supply of the house or building when the
technology to make a Gas Leakage Detector having concentration of gas is about to reach its Lower
Smart Alerting techniques involving calling, sending Explosion Limit (LEL) which is done with the help
text message and an e-mail to the concerned of relays. The Gas Leakage Detector System also
authority and an ability to predict hazardous sends the sensor reading to cloud so that analytics
situation so that people could be made aware in could be carried out on the readings for increasing the
advance by performing data analytics on sensor precision of the system.
readings.

Keywords - Internet of Things, Gas Leakage 2 RELATED WORK

Detector, Smart Alerting Techniques, Prediction,
Data Analytics. Gas Detectors have been in the market for a very
long time and have been vastly used. They have wide
1 INTRODUCTION range of applications and can be found in industrial
plants, refineries, pharmaceutical manufacturing,
Internet of Things aim towards making life simpler paper pulp mills, aircraft and ship-building facilities,
by automating every small task around us. wastewater treatment facilities, vehicles, indoor air
As much is IoT helping in automating tasks, the quality testing and homes[2].
benefits of IoT can also be extended for enhancing There are a lot of ways in which the Gas Detectors
the existing safety standards. could be characterized. They are categorized on the
basis of what type of gas they detect, what is the
Safety has always been an important criteria while technology behind the making of the sensor and
designing home, buildings, industries as well as sometimes even the components which are used that
cities. The increased concentration of certain gases in affect their operation mechanism (semiconductors,
the atmosphere can prove to be extremely dangerous. oxidation, catalytic, photoionization, infrared,
These gases might be flammable at certain etc.)[2]. Gas Detectors are also widely characterized
temperature and humidity conditions, toxic after as fixed or portable detectors. They are characterized
exceeding the specified concentrations limits or even on the basis of which category of risk they fall in, Ex-
a contributing factor in the air pollution of an area Ox-Tox, the three categories of risk - Ex – Risk of
leading to problems such as smog and reduced explosion by flammable gases - Ox – Oxygen Risk of
asphyxiation by oxygen displacement Risk of

978-1-5090-6221-8/17/$31.00 2017
c IEEE 327
 increase of flammability by oxygen enrichment - Tox 3 SMART HOMES AND CITIES
– Risk of poisoning by toxic gases [3], the list of
categorization goes on. As a result we cannot have a Internet of Things is being used everywhere in order
single system or a group of systems which we can to ease our daily tasks and improve the quality of life.
call the best but instead there is a plethora of devices There are innumerable modules that could be thought
available for matching the varying user requirements of for smart homes and cities and some of them are
some of which are listed below. discussed below:

A. Handheld EGD01 A. Gas Detection Systems

This Handheld EGD01 delivers high-sensitivity, and This is the system which has been discussed in this
is easily adjustable for detecting a wide variety of paper.
combustible gases, including methane, propane, and The versatile nature of this system comes because of
butane. It is used by the building inspectors [4]. As the fact that the same system with a change in the
the name of the product suggests, it is a portable type and number of sensors can be used in different
device and hence battery operated. It has both a places. They can be used at homes, buildings,
sound and light alarm. industries for detecting LPG, Propane, Methane or
any other harmful gas leakages (discussed in this
B. Amprobe GSD600 Gas Leak Detector paper) and with some changes could be used in cities
This is a portable gas detector for detecting gases for detecting air pollution and performing analytics
such as methane and butane. It has a stainless steel on the sensor readings to predict and prevent
probe. The probe allows the user to get into the hard- dangerous situations.
to-reach places. It was designed for detecting gas
within closed piping system and it has an audible B. Traffic management system
alarm [4]. In London, a traffic management system known as
SCOOT maximises green light time at traffic
C. Analox Sensor Technology [5] intersections by feeding back magnetometer and
Safety of campus in terms of gas leakage detection inductive loop data to a supercomputer, which can
in laboratory environment, canteens and other areas orchestrate traffic lights across the city to improve
of possible gas leakage have been ensured by using traffic throughput.[6]
of devices such as O2NE+, SAFE-OX+, A50, etc.
provided by ANALOX Sensor Technology [5] and C. Smart Lighting
many more such devices by various other producers Flexible street lighting (smart lighting) [7] allows
are used all around the world in all the campuses. municipalities to control the brightness of street
Other devices like First Alert CO615, Kidde KN- lights.
COPP-B-LPM, KN-COEG-3 Nighthawk,
PNG2000A Natural Gas Detector Pen, Safe-T-Alert D. Voice Controlled Automation
30 Series and so many more, to name only a few are The commercial products Google Home and Amazon
available in market for the gas detection purpose. Echo are being widely used for automation of home.
These improve quality of living as well as consider
These are a few of the mostly used devices and all of
the energy conservation factors such as switching off
them have a very high precision. Their price range
lights and fans automatically when the room is
from 30$ to 180$-200$. These devices are mostly
empty.
battery operated and are used for detecting a wide
range of gases. One common thing that all these
E. Queue Management System
devices share is the mode of transmitting warnings
This system allows the people to know about the
which is audio (high pitched alarms) and visual
shortest queue and also the average waiting time of a
(digital or LED) techniques. Our IoT based model for
certain queue
gas leakage detection is taking this traditional
.
approach a notch up by adding the feature of
immediately intimating the concerned authorities and
also updating the sensor readings, time to time, on An alternative use of smart city technology can be
cloud. The detailed description is given in Section 4 found in Santa Cruz, California, where local
of this paper. authorities analyse historical crime data in order to
predict police requirements and maximise police
presence where it is required [8]. The analytical tools
generate a list of 10 places each day where property

328 2017 Second International Conference On Computing and Communications Technologies(ICCCT’17)

crimes are more likely to occur, and then placing concentration of flammable gases is about to reach
police efforts on these regions when officers are not their lower explosive limit (LEL) the system trips the
responding to any emergency. This use is different to main switch which causes a complete power cut off
the manner in which European cities utilise smart city of the building or office or wherever the system is
technology, possibly highlighting the breadth of the installed. This will serve two purpose that is one, it
smart city concept in different parts of the world [9]. will prevent any disaster due to electricity or power
and two, in case the leakage is being caused by any
such device whose turning off will prevent any
4 GAS LEAKAGE DETECTORS further leakage, this purpose will be served by the
power cut off feature. Description about the
Different types of equipments are used for various components used and the processing steps involved
purposes in our day to day life and most of them have have been discussed in detail in Section 4.1 and
the capability of emitting some kind of gases or some Section 4.2 of this paper.
compounds in the air while in use. It is very
important to keep a check on the concentration levels
of the gases and other compounds as some of them,
when exceed the safe concentration level, are
flammable under the room temperature and humidity
condition.
Mixtures of dispersed combustible materials (such as
gaseous or vaporized fuels, and some dusts) and air
will burn only if the fuel concentration lies within
well-defined lower and upper bounds determined
experimentally, referred to as flammability limits or
explosive limits. Combustion can range in violence
from deflagration, through detonation, to explosion
[10].
A traditional gas detection system checks for the
concentration levels and alerts people about the Fig. 1 Prototype
leakage through audio and visual alarms.
The IoT based model of the traditional gas leakage
detection system does not only alerts people by audio 4.1 Components
alarm but also attempts to alert the concerned
personnel through a call and text message on their Fig. 2 shows the circuit diagram of the prototype.
phone so that even if no one is present in the area of The main components used in the making of this
leakage, they are made aware of the situation. prototype are as follows:
Along with this the prototype also sends the details
containing sensor reading recorded at the time when 1) Arduino UNO (ATMEGA328P): A microcontroller
the alarm got actuated which could be used by an board that comes pre-programmed with a boot loader
individual or an organisation to make decision about that allows to upload new code to it without the use
what type of attention is required in the area of gas of an external hardware programmer. The Arduino
leakage. Uno can be programmed with the Arduino Software
Another most significant feature of this prototype is IDE [11]. The gas sensor is connected to this board
that it can record the sensor readings and maintain a for processing the sensor readings according to the
database of these readings of concentrations of gases program. Arduino powers the Ethernet Shield which
at different timestamps. This data could be utilized is stacked upon it, used for connectivity to Internet. It
for carrying out analytics on it. The analysis of the also powers the GSM Module which is used for
sensor readings can help in understanding the usual making a call. The Piezo Buzzer used as an audible
conditions of the area, under what conditions do the alarm and a 5V relay used for the power cut off
readings of sensor usually goes up and when does it feature are also mounted on this board.
actually start getting dangerous and needs attention.
This will increase the precision of the system,
reducing the false alarms and hence actually 2) Ethernet Shield (W5100): The Arduino Ethernet
becoming a very reliable system within a span of a Shield allows an Arduino board to connect to the
few days. Along with all these features, this system internet. It is based on the (Wiznet W5500 Ethernet
also comes with a power cut off option. In case the chip). The Wiznet W5500 provides a network (IP)

2017 Second International Conference On Computing and Communications Technologies(ICCCT’17) 329

 stack capable of both TCP and UDP [12]. It has an required. The relay has 5 pins. One pin is connected
operating voltage of 5 volts which is supplied from to one of the digital pins of the Arduino Board. One
the Arduino Board and provides a connection speed is connected to bridge the 220V power supply to the
of 10/100Mb. relay. The other pin redirects this supply to the
appliances. Rest of the two are ground connection,
It helps in uploading sensor values on cloud and one for the main power supply and the other for
sending email when the sensor value crosses the Arduino Board.
threshold limits.
6) Piezo Buzzer: It is used for generating audio
3) GSM Module (SIM900A): This module is
connected to Arduino board which helps in making alarm.
calls and sending text messages when the sensor
value crosses the threshold limits. 4.2 Processing Steps
The SIM900A delivers GSM/GPRS 900/1800MHz
Fig.3 shows a flowchart depicting the processing
performance for voice, SMS, Data, and Fax in a
steps.
small form factor and with low power consumption
1) The MQ-2 Gas Sensor of the MQ-x family detects
[13].
the concentration of gases. In order to stabilize the
4) Gas Sensor- MQ2: The prototype of gas detector
sensor reading it is important to pre-heat it. The best
system here uses an MQ2 sensor of the MQ-x family
preheat time for MQ-2 sensor is 24 hours or more.
that detects gases, specifically H2 (Hydrogen), LPG
(Liquefied Petroleum Gas), CH4 (Methane),
CO(Carbon Monoxide), Alcohol, Smoke and The gas sensor module consists of a steel exoskeleton
Propane, in the atmosphere. The sensor value only under which a sensing element is housed. This
reflects the approximated trend of gas concentration sensing element is subjected to current through
in a permissible error range, it does represent the connecting leads. This current is known as heating
exact gas concentration. The detection of certain current through it, the gases coming close to the
components in the air usually requires a more precise sensing element get ionized and are absorbed by the
and costly instrument, which cannot be done with a sensing element. This changes the resistance of the
single gas sensor [1]. sensing element which alters the value of the current
going out of it. [14]
5) Relay: Relay that works with 220V and has a 5V
input is used in the circuit for cutting off power when

Fig. 2 Gas Leakage Detector Circuit Diagram

330 2017 Second International Conference On Computing and Communications Technologies(ICCCT’17)

Steel Mesh filters out the suspended particles so that connection required for doing so is provided by
only gaseous elements are able to pass to insides of stacking up the Ethernet Shield on Arduino UNO
the sensor. [14] board.
There are other platforms which could be used for
2) Every value recorded by the sensor is checked this, for example. Microsoft Power BI, Google Big
against a threshold value. This threshold value is Query and the sensor data can also be posted on
decided based upon the nature of the gases and also Google spreadsheet.
on the behaviour of the sensor.
4) The buzzer is actuated when the readings exceed
Precisely the sensor is connected to the A0 pin of the the threshold value.
Arduino board. The voltage read from the sensor is
calculated and displayed. This value can be used as a 5) An email about the details containing the
threshold to detect any increase/decrease in gas concentration levels of gases is sent to the concerned
concentration. [1] authority (Lab In charge, Technical Department). In
order to send the email an internet connection is
Now when the sensor will be exposed to the gases
required which is provided by the Ethernet Shield.
that MQ-2 can detect then the sensor readings could
be compared with the threshold value for detecting This feature is totally modifiable depending upon the
leakages. need of the user. The e-mail could be sent every hour,
every 24 hours or whatever is desired. It requires only
3) The concentration of gases are recorded by the
a simple manipulation of code.
sensor and these values are updated on a cloud
platform and in this case on ThingSpeak. The internet

Fig. 3 Gas Leakage Detection Processing Steps

2017 Second International Conference On Computing and Communications Technologies(ICCCT’17) 331

6) A call is made to the concerned authority (Lab Temperature and Humidity Sensor will be very
Incharge, Fire Station, and Ambulance). GSM helpful.
Module is used for making a call as well as sending
text message. B. Performing Big Data Analytics on the sensor
Just like the email feature, this is also modifiable readings
according to the user needs as to when and what Analytics could be performed on the sensor readings.
message should be sent and who all should be the The readings from sensors could be used for forming
recipients. predictions of situations where there can be a mishap.
7) If the sensor readings are about to reach the lower Instead of straightaway alarming when the
explosion limit (LEL), the relay cuts off the power concentrations have gone high, algorithms could be
supply to the main switch. worked upon which could determine such situations
prior to their occurrence. Combining the gas sensor
8) The sensor readings that were uploaded to cloud readings with the readings from temperature and
(Step 3) can be used for data analytics. The average humidity sensor would increase the precision of the
reading of 24 hours can be calculated, every day system. The cases of false alarms being raised will
since the day of deployment. The comparison of reduce down to very small percentages.
these average readings will help in increasing the
precision of the system and help it in understanding C. Dedicated Application for System
the behaviour of the environment in which it is A dedicated mobile application could be made for the
deployed. system. The features of the application would be:
1. Getting the details of the concentration levels of
4.3 Cost Estimation of Project and Comparisons the house within a tap of a button.
2. Since it is a safety device it is important for it to
The price of the existing Gas Detection system in be perfectly calibrated and maintained at all
markets vary from around $30 to $150-$180 and times. The app can make sure to send reminders
more, with the one with minimum specification about getting the system checked every once in a
costing the least. while.
The Gas Detection system proposed in this paper has 3. The user can add or remove the recipients who
a cost estimate of $50. This system inculcates the will receive the information of leakage
features that are not available in any other existing whenever they require
gas detectors; smart alerting and prediction. With all
these features and some calibration this system can
prove to be as good as any high priced module and REFERENCES
maybe even better.
[1] (2016) Grove-Gas Sensor(MQ) on seeed website.
5 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORKS [Online]. Available: http://wiki.seeed.cc/Grove-
Gas_Sensor-MQ2/
The proposed gas leakage detector is promising in the
field of safety. The attempt while making this
[2] (2016) Gas Detector on Wikipedia. [Online].
prototype has been to bring a revolution in the field
Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_detector
of safety against the leakage of harmful and toxic
gases to minimize and hence nullify any major or
minor hazard being caused due to them. [3] (2016) Introduction to Gas Detection System on
Nevertheless there is always scope of improvement Draeger website. [Online]. Available:
and some of the features that will improve the system https://www.draeger.com/Library/Content/introductio
and make it even better and reliable have been n_gds_fl_9046421_en_1.pdf
mentioned below:
[4] (2016) 8 Best Gas Detectors on ezvid website.
A. Extended Features of System [Online]. Available: https://wiki.ezvid.com/best-gas-
The behaviour of the gases is dependent on the detectors
temperature and humidity of the air around. A gas at
certain concentration might not be flammable at low [5] (2016) Analox Sensor Technology. [Online].
temperature but might have explosive nature at high Available:https://www.analoxsensortechnology.com/
temperature. For this reason addition of a downloads/14231526008722_Lab_brochure'15.2.pdf

332 2017 Second International Conference On Computing and Communications Technologies(ICCCT’17)

[6]Winkless, Laurie (2016-08-11). Science and the
City: The Mechanics Behind the Metropolis.
Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9781472913227.

[7]Amsterdam Smart City. "Amsterdam Smart City ~

Flexible street lighting". Retrieved 2015-05-30.

[8] Baxter, Stephen (2012-02-26). "Modest gains in

first six months of Santa Cruz's predictive police
program". Santa Cruz Sentinel. Retrieved 2015-05-
26.

[9] (2016) Smart City on Wikipedia. [Online].

Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_city

[10] (2016) Flammability Limit on Wikipedia.

[Online]. Available:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flammability_limit

[11] (2016) Arduino UNO on Arduino website.

[Online]. Available:
https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardUno

[12] (2016) Arduino Ethernet Shield 2 on Arduino

website. [Online]. Available:
https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoEthernetShi
eld

[13] M2Mcom (2016) SIM900A on Simcom.

[Online]. Available:
http://www.simcom.eu/index.php?m=termekek&prim
e=1&sub=40&id=0000000155

[14] (2016) How Gas Sensors Work on

Engineersgarage. [Online]. Available:
http://www.engineersgarage.com/insight/how-gas-
sensor-works

2017 Second International Conference On Computing and Communications Technologies(ICCCT’17) 333