Design and Construction of Gas

Detection using Arduino

BY

OLUSANYA SAMUEL ADEWUMMI

BEING A RESEARCH PROJECT SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER-ENGINEERING,

IN PARTIAL FULLFIMENT OF THE REQUIREMENT FOR THE AWARD OF HIGHER NATIONAL

Liquefied petroleum Gas (LPG) leakage is an accident waiting to happen. Fire incidents resulting from LPG are
[ dangerous as it could lead to loss of lives and properties. Therefore, it is very important to measure liquid
petroleum gas concentration in an environment and to device a means to control it to prevent any possibility of fire
incident.

This work aims at designing a system that detects LPG leakage and alert the user through alarm and status display
and besides, the system has the capability to turn close off the gas supply channel with an electrically controlled
valve as a primary safety measure.

Reviews of previous studies in controlling the LPG leakage have shown that electrically controlled valve can make
significant job in preventing the gas to escape into environment as failure to do is quite dangerous. This present
study will extend the capability of the previous designs by incorporating a means of simultaneously alerting the
user via an electronic text message and ringing a buzzer as well. The system built was after the modification of the
electrical circuits in the previous designs and it was tested using a cigarette lighter. The lighter contains inflammable
gas (methane gas). As the lighter was opened up and the gas concentration near the device’s sensor was allowed to
reach the threshold value of 45ppm (indicated on LCD), the system automatically activated itself and following
events occurred: the buzzer rang, the supply line valve was shut down and sixty seconds later, a gas leakage
detection notification (SMS) was sent to the user via the predefined phone number.

The shutting of the supply valve stopped further gas flow to prevent occurrence of fire incident. LPG users either at
home or industry need to take preventive measure to detective potential gas leakage in their environment. One
way of achieving the objective of detecting and controlling gas leakage is to incorporate a device that can
automatically take action in the event of a leakage. The system designed and constructed in this project
demonstrates that it can automatically detect and stop gas leakage in vulnerable premises
 CHAPTER 1

BACKGROUND OF STUDY

Liquefied Petroleum Gas also abbreviated as LPG which is a mixture of burnable hydro-carbons.
Liquefied petroleum gas leakage happens in house, business locations, and gas-powered vehicle and in
vehicles that transport gas. This leakage is hazardous as it causes fire incidents. The developed system
gives the alarm after detection of the presence of gas and leakage can be controlled by valve resulting to
a continuous real time monitoring of Leak Gas. It is of great importance to know the concentration of
LPG in an environment in order to prevent accident of fire. Many incidents of fire due LPG leakage
occurred as a result of forgetting to turn off gas cylinder valve after cooking and many people do not
usually check the valve status the next time they want to cook. In this situation, once the diffused gas is
ignited, it will just explode and this will lead to the loss of lives and properties. This is the reason this
system becomes very important. The major problem about this system is how it responds when gas level
is risen too high. This system is designed to monitor the concentration of gas and display on an LCD the
status of the gas. When gas level detected is high, the system will automatically close the valve, sounds
alarm and sends SMS to the predefined mobile number about the status of the gas. The system is
programmed to resend the SMS after every 60 seconds for three times.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Several times people forget to turn off their gas cookers, especially those that are not familiar to using a
gas cooker. In a situation the person accidentally ignites a flame, then there will be a serious explosion
which will result to loss of lives and properties. Additionally, sometimes leakage happens from the gas
supply host which is also a dangerous case.

Liquefied petroleum gas leakage happens inside a home, commercial premises, gas powered vehicle and
in gas transportation vehicles. The causality caused by LPG leakage is common news in media. In
November 2015 in Kano state, fire outbreak occurred at Sabon Gari Market and as a result of it,
properties worth more than N186m were destroyed by the outbreaks. Recently, a fire accident has
occurred in Potiskum Yobe state as a result of LPG leakage which caused newly married couple lost their
lives. As a Computer Engineering student, it is one of the requirements in pursuing a degree certificate to
carry out an intelligent piece of work that will solve a certain problem such as fire outbreaks due to LPG
leakage.
PURPOSE OF STUDY

This system consists of five main sections. In the first section, the MQ-3 gas sensor with the help
portable gas leak detector, detects the presence of gas particles. Second part consists of microcontroller
unit which is coded with the requited instructions. When gas concentration detected by the sensor
reaches high level, the sensor sends signal to the microcontroller. In third part, microcontroller unit
compares the signal with the reference and also sends signal to the display unit which shows the
concentration value of the leaked gas, and to the fourth part of the system, that is alarm unit followed by
sending a text message to the owner of the premises with the help of GSM SIM900 module. In fifth part,
electromechanical or solenoid valve turns off after receiving signal from the microcontroller with the
help of relay and the solenoid valve closes the main gas supply.

The system to be built take its power supply of 240V/50Hz from the mains using a stepped down 12V
transformer and rectify using a bridge rectifier. The output is regulated to 5VDC using LM7805

SCOPE OF STUDY

This work presents the design and implementation of a LPG detection and control system using SMS
alert. It is designed to sense the presence of a LPG gas leakage in an environment and tells
microcontroller the status of the gas in the immediate environment. If the concentration of a gas reaches
the level that can cause an accident, the microcontroller is programmed to automatically send a signal to
the GSM module that will send a warning message to the house owner, turn off the gas supply channel
and activate a buzzer.

SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY
 CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

Mahalingam, et al (2015) designed and implemented an Economical Gas Leakage Detector. In this project
when the sensor detects no gas in the air, it produces a voltage below 1.2V on the output pin, which is
connected to port RA0 of the microcontroller. But when the sensor detects the present of the gas in the
air, the voltage rises above 1.2V. The voltage ranges vary from 1.2V to 5V. It is depended on the amount
of gas sensed. If the value of voltage falls within the range of 1.2V to 4V, the microcontroller activates a
low-level early warning by turning-on LEDs and buzzer.

The low-level warning signal is maintained for 100ms (slow mode) before it stops. This loop is repeated
until the voltage drops to 1.2V and below or rises to beyond 4V. If the voltage rises above 4V, then the
high-level dangerous warning sign is activated by sending signals to turn-on LEDs and the buzzers (BUZ1
and BUZ2) respectively.

These signals are supplied for 50ms (fast mode) and then stop. This step is repeated until the voltage
drops below 4V. The system remains active until the gas level is reduced below the acceptable limit of
less than 400ppm. An improvement to the above system is that when a leakage occurs, the gas supply
channel is automatically closed using an electronic valve that is controlled by the microcontroller. Also, in
the existing system, there was no provision of GSM module to send an SMS to a pre-defined number, but
in my system, a GSM module is incorporated. It is used for sending warning message to a pre-defined
number. Rajitha, et al (2012) designed a security alert system using GSM for gas leakage.

The aim of the project is to monitor for liquid petroleum gas (LPG) leakage to avoid fire accidents. The
system detects the leakage of the LPG using gas sensor and alerts the consumer about the gas leakage by
sending SMS. When the system detects LPG concentration in the air exceeds the certain level then it
immediately alerts the consumer by sending SMS to specified mobile phone and alert the people at
home by activating the alarm which includes LED, buzzer simultaneously and display the message on LCD
display to take the necessary action and switch on the exhaust fan to decrease the gas concentration in
the air. An improvement to this system is that when a leakage occurs, the gas supply channel is
automatically turned off using an electronic valve (solenoid valve) that is controlled by the
microcontroller. Fraiwan, (2011) designed a wireless home safety gas leakage detection system.

This project aims to design the system to improve the drawback of the work reviewed. The system will
be monitoring the presence of LPG gas in an environment. When gas is detected, the microcontroller will
activate buzzer to make an audible sound, GSM module to send a message “Gas Leakage Detected” to
the predefined phone number indicating the concentration value of the gas detected, LCD to display the
gas status and the electronic valve which will automatically close the gas supply channel.
Working Principle MQ-3 gas sensor

MQ-3 gas sensor is used for, gas leakage detection system because it is suitable for detecting H2, LPG,
CH4, CO, Alcohol, Smoke or propane. Due to its high sensitivity and fast response time, measurement
can be taken as soon as possible. The sensitivity of the sensor can be adjusted by potentiometer. The
MQ-3 sensor detects LPG gas, and compare its output voltage with reference voltage. It rises a HIGH
output when LPG gas is detected. The MQ3 gas sensor module is easy to interface with the
microcontroller (Agnihotri, 2018).

Liquid Crystal Display (LCD)

An LCD is short for Liquid Crystal Display. It is basically a display unit which uses liquid crystals to
produce a visible image. Here we shall concentrate on the small monochrome, alphanumeric type which
displays alphabetical, numerical and symbolic characters from the standard ASCII character set.

When current is applied to this special kind of crystal, it turns opaque blocking the backlight that lives
behind the screen. As a result, that particular area will become dark compared to other. And that’s how
characters are displayed on the screen. A 16×2-line Hitachi HD44780 display is shown in

fig 2.3. The display is a standard LM016L which displays 2 lines of 16 characters (16×2). Each character is
58 pixels, making it 80×16 pixels overall. The display receives ASCII codes for each character at the data
inputs (D0 – D7)
Solenoid Valve

A solenoid valve is an electromechanical device in which the solenoid uses an electric current to
generate a magnetic field and thereby operate a mechanism which regulates the opening of fluid flow in
a valve. Solenoid valves differ in the characteristics of the electric current they use, the strength of the
magnetic field they generate, the mechanism they use to regulate the fluid, and the type and
characteristics of fluid they control. The mechanism varies from linear action, plunger-type actuators to
pivoted-armature actuators and rocker actuators. The valve can use a two-port design to regulate a flow
or use a three or more-port design to switch flows between ports. Multiple solenoid valves can be
placed together on a manifold (Loshali, 2017). The figure 2.4 below shows solenoid valve.

ATmega328 Microcontroller

The microcontroller used in this unit is the high-performance Atmel 8-bit ATmega328 microcontroller
shown in figure 2.8 below which is a low-power, high-performance based microcontroller combines 32KB
ISP flash memory with read-while-write capabilities, 1KB EEPROM, 2KB SRAM, 23 general purpose I/O
lines, 32 general purpose working registers, a single 16-bit Timer/Counter with independent prescaler,
compare and capture modes. The ATmega microcontroller is used because it is easier to program, cheap,
and its availability in the market. When the gas sensor detects the gas concentration and gives signal to
the microcontroller (ATmega328) with the help of ADC, the microcontroller receives the signal and sends
activation signal to other external devices attached with it. This activates the buzzer, message display on
liquid crystal display, GSM module which send warning SMS to the user and lastly close up the supply by
turning off the solenoid valve.