A Wireless Home Safety Gas Leakage Detection System

Luay Fraiwan, Khaldon Lweesy, Aya Bani-Salma, Nour Mani

Jordan University of Science & Technology Department Biomedical Engineering P.O. Box 3030 Irbid 22110 Jordan fraiwan@just.edu.jo
Abstract- A wireless safety device for gas leakage detection is proposed. The device is intended for use in household safety where appliances and heaters that use natural gas and liquid petroleum gas (LPG) may be a source of risk. The system also can be used for other applications in the industry or plants that depend on LPG and natural gas in their operations. The system design consists of two main modules: the detection and transmission module, and the receiving module. The detection and transmitting module detects the change of gas concentration using a special sensing circuit built for this purpose. This module checks if a change in concentration of gas(es) has exceeded a certain pre-determined threshold. If the sensor detects a change in gas concentration, it activates and audiovisual alarm and sends a signal to the receiver module. The receiver module acts as a mobile alarm device to allow the mobility within the house premises. The system was tested using LPG and the alarm was activated as a result of change in concentration. Keywords-gas leakage; gas detection; gas sensor I. INTRODUCTION industry, most of the cooking is done using LPG, and more than 50% of the heaters use LPG [2]. As a result, accidents from gas leakage increase each and every day. In 2007, the number of gas bottles that were destroyed as a result of gas leakage or fire exposure was 142 gas bottles. Table 1 shows the number of accidents related to the use of LPG reported by the department of civil defense in 2007 in Jordan. The total number of accidents was 584 that caused 398 injuries and 15 deaths (the population of Jordan is 5 millions). Moreover, the number of accidents per year keeps increasing; a percentage increase of 10% was reported from 2006 to 2007 [3]. Table 1: Accident statistics related to the use and storage of LPG and natural gas in Jordan in 2007
Nature of the accident Fire due to gas leak Suffocation because of gas leak from heaters Gas leak without fire in public places Total No. of Accidents
359 85 24 584

Causalities
135 209 54 398

Deaths
6 7 2 15

In the past decade, there was an increase use of liquefied petroleum gases (LPG) and natural gas (consists mainly of methane) to meet the increasing demand for energy and replace oil or coal due to their environmental disadvantages. LPG and natural gas burn cleanly and are less harmful to the environment. They have been widely used in industry, heating, home appliances, and motor fuel [1]. Although LPG and natural gas are environmental friendly, they can pose a serious threat if they leak. They are normally stored in pressurized steel cylinders in liquid form and vaporize at normal temperatures. LPG is heavier than air, therefore it flows along the floor and settle in low points which makes it difficult to disperse. If leak happens, LPG and natural gas boil into air and replace oxygen which can cause suffocation. Moreover, ignition may happen and cause an explosion. Therefore, the detection of gases has gain more interest in recent years especially in fields of safety, industry, environment, and emission control. Household safety is becoming an issue due to the increase use of LPG and natural gas for heating and home appliances. In Jordan (a developing country), besides the huge use of LPG in

This work attempts to build a safety device for detecting LPG and natural gas that leak at low levels to avoid any possible accidents [4-8]. The proposed device monitors the levels of LPG and natural gas as well as other gases such as carbon monoxide. The device was intended for use in houses where leak of LPG and natural gas can pose a serious threat. It was built as a wireless system to increase the mobility of the alarm system within the premises of the house. II. MATERIALS AND METHODS The proposed wireless home gas leakage system consists of two major modules: the gas leakage detection and transmission module, and the receiver module. The gas leakage detection and transmission module detects the change in concentration of LPG and natural gas and activates an audiovisual alarm when it exceeds a certain threshold. Furthermore, it sends another alarm message

978-1-4244-7000-6/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE

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through a radiofrequency (RF) system to the receiver module. The receiver module is a mobile unit that could be placed anywhere within the premises of the house so that the alarm can be detected and heard at a distance from the place of gas leakage. A block diagram for the proposed system is shown in Figure 1.

resistance (RL). The sensor needs to be heated to function properly, which is done through a heating element of a fixed resistance (RH). This means that the sensor should be switched on for a specific period of time before measurements are made. The heating power supply is done through the same power supply of the sensing circuit.

Detection and Transmission Module

Audiovisual Alarm LED Buzzer LCD

Gas Sensor

Sensing Circuit

Microcontroller (ADC, processing, encoding, and interface)

RF Transmitter

Audiovisual Alarm LED Buzzer LCD

RF Receiver

Microcontroller (decoding, processing and interface) Receiver Module

Figure 1: Block diagram for the wireless gas leakage detection system
A. Gas leakage detection and transmission module The output voltage Vo from the sensing circuit is given by:

The main functions of this module are to detect changes in gas concentration, activate an audiovisual alarm, and transmit a signal to the receiver unit. It consists of a gas detection sensor, a sensing circuit, a microcontroller, and an RF transmission system. The gas detection is done using a solid state gas sensor (Model: MQ-5, Hanwei Electronics Co., Ltd, China) that is sensitive to LPG, natural gas (or methane) and other gases such as CO and H2 but not sensitive to air; therefore the reading is not affected by the presence of air. The sensing part is made from Tin Dioxide (SnO2) layer, which is a resistive element with a resistance (Rs) that changes with the change of concentration of gases like LPG, CH4, CO, and alcohol [9, 10]. Figure 2 shows the sensitivity characteristics of the MQ-5 sensor normalized to the sensor resistance Ro at 1000 ppm of H2 in air. The sensor can detect small concentrations of the above mentioned gases as small as 0.1 mg/L [11], which makes it suitable for gas leak detection. It is worth mentioning that the sensor is also sensitive to room temperature and humidity [11, 12]. The driving circuit of the gas sensor, which is shown in Figure 3, requires a DC power supply of 5 Volts and a load

Vo ( Rs) =

RL Vc Rs + RL

and is fed into a microcontroller (PIC-16F877A, Microchip Technology Inc., USA) where it is digitized using an 8-bit analogue to digital converter (ADC). The microcontroller reads the voltage from the sensor and uses it to calculate change in concentration. As mentioned earlier, the gas sensor is sensitive to many gases and actually the gas type cannot be determined. Instead, in this work, it was assumed that the gas sensor has the same sensitivity for LPG and CH4, which can be considered a valid assumption as shown in Figure 2. Under normal conditions, the microcontroller starts with a calibration stage where it reads the sensor voltage under normal conditions and considers it as the zero value. Also, the calibration of the system can be done by pressing a 'calibrate' button. The microcontroller continuously reads the voltage from the sensor and compares the reading with the calibration value. It displays the change of sensor voltage (V) relative to the threshold (the maximum allowed change Vth ). If the reading of the sensor voltage exceeds the predetermined

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threshold, the microcontroller activates an audiovisual alarm and sends a message to the receiver module indicating that there is change in gas concentration. This is done by the microcontroller by sending out a USART encoded packet through I/O port into the input pin of the RF transmitting module (Model: TXM-433-10, Linx Technologies, USA). The RF transmitting module is a low power frequency modulation (FM) one way link that can reach a distance up to 200 m outdoor and approximately 30 m indoor. It has an operating frequency of 418 MHz and supports a transfer rate up to 20 kbps, which is a sufficient rate for this application.

C. System operation During the initial calibration of the sensor, the microcontroller sets the zero point concentration (measured voltage from the sensor). Any change of concentration results in decrease of the sensor resistance Rs. The range of the sensor resistance Rs is from 10-60 K , therefore the load resistance should be chosen such that the output voltage Vo is maximized which leads to increasing the sensitivity of the entire detection system. For normal working conditions, RL was chosen to be 20 K . The supply voltage Vc was 5 Volts, thus the range of the output voltage is 0.25-3.33 V which covers most of the ADC range (0-5 V). The output voltage increases nonlinearly with the increase of Rs value or gas concentration. Changing the load resistance RL changes the output voltage and the sensitivity of the measurement system; for this purpose a potentiometer was used for the load resistance by which the sensitivity of the entire system can be adjusted. The microcontroller reads the sensor voltage continuously using the 8-bit ADC. If there is a normal gas concentration detected, the microcontroller displays a message onto the LCD display indicating normal conditions. The message also contains the percentage (V/Vth). In this way the change of concentration can be tracked even if it was below the threshold level for the alarm. In case of an elevated gas concentration levels, the LCD displays a dangerous gas levels message, a red led is switched on, and a buzzer goes on. The microcontroller sends a message to the receiver module to activate the alarms (same as in the detection module). III. RESULTS

Figure 2: MQ-5 sensor sensitivity characteristics for LPG and CH4.

Heater in

Sensor Rs Vo
+ 5V A complete prototype system for gas leakage detection system was implemented as shown in Figure 4. The working of the proposed system depends on detecting the change in concentration of any of the gases mentioned earlier, which provides a flexibility in the system to detect any leakage of these gases. Furthermore, the system calibrates itself upon starting, and can be programmed to perform calibration at certain time intervals due to the variability of the sensor sensitivity with temperature and humidity. The proposed system was tested by introducing a very small amount of LPG into a bottle of 1.5 Litters filled with air. The bottle was shacked well and the sensor was introduced to the bottle after initial calibration. The sensor was able to detect small amounts of gases and the alarm was activated. The operation range of the wireless system was tested and found to be around 22 m for indoor and 110 m for outdoor (open space). IV. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIOM This works represents a prototype for wireless gas leakage systems that can be used mainly in household safety and many other applications in the industry and environment. For example it can be used in facilities where gas cylinders are stored. Any leakage can be recognized through the receiver module. The use of a sensor that is sensitive to small changes of concentration

RL
Heater out

Figure 3: Sensor driving circuit

B. Receiver module

The receiver module is a mobile unit that receives state events from the gas detection and transmitting module. It consists of an RF receiver (Model: SILRX-418, Linx Technologies, USA) and a microcontroller (PIC-16F877A, Microchip Technology Inc., USA). After receiving the data from the transmitter, the RF receiver sends it to the microcontroller. The microcontroller reads the data, decodes it, and displays it onto the output devices (red light emitting diode, buzzer, and LCD display).

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provides an excellent tool to detect a gas leak as it can detect small concentrations down to 100 ppm. The sensor used in the system may be affected by the surrounding temperature and humidity, therefore calibrating the system at the start up of operation was done to determine the zero set point. The sensitivity of the entire system can be adjusted by changing the load resistor of the sensor which provides the flexibility to externally calibrate the system to avoid any false alarms. The algorithm used in the microcontroller system depends on detecting the change of gas concentration levels and therefore the output voltage of the sensor. This gives the system the advantage of detecting leaks of the gases that the sensor detects. Measuring the actual concentration of a certain gas can not be easily done with this sensor, since it can detect many gases at the same time and has a non-linear sensitivity curve as shown in Figure 2. The proposed system can be supplied with a switching circuit along with an electromechanical solenoid valve that can disable the flow of gas from the source in case of detected gas leakage. Further improvement can be introduced to the system by including a temperature measurement system to be used for temperature compensation, which can be done through the microcontroller to reduce the number of false positives and false negatives.

[4] D. S. Lee, D. D. Lee, S. W. Ban, M. Lee, and Y. T. Kim, "SnO2 gas sensing array for combustible and explosive gas leakage recognition," IEEE Sensors J., Vol. 2, pp. 140- 149, 2002. [5] M. Twerdochlib (Oviedo, FL), "Apparatus for monitoring hydrogen gas leakage into the stator coil water cooling system of a hydrogen cooled electric generator," United states patent no. 4, 766,557, 1988. [6] T. Iseki, H. Tai, and K. Kimura, "A portable remote methane sensor using a tunable diode laser," Meas. Sci. Technol., Vol. 11, pp. 594602, 2000. [7] W. Chung, and D. Lee, "Real time muti-channel gas leak monitoring system using CPLD chip," Sensors and Actuators B, Vol. 77, pp. 186-189, 2001. [8] V. Diduck, "Integrated local or remote control liquid gas leak detection and shut-off system," United States patent No. 6025788, 2000. [9] H. Endres, W. Gttler, R. Hartinger, S. Drost, W. Hellmich, G. Mller, Ch. Bosch, V. Braunmh, A. Krenkow, C. Perego, and G. Sberveglieri, "A thin-film SnO2 sensor system for simultaneous detection of CO and NO2 with neural signal evaluation". Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical, Vol. 36, pp. 353-357, 1996. [10] U. Hoefer, H. Bttnera, A. Felske, G. Khner, K. Steiner, G. Sulz, "Thin-film SnO2 sensor arrays controlled by variation of contact potentiala suitable tool for chemometric gas mixture analysis in the TLV range," Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical, Vol. 44, pp. 429-433, 1996. [11] Hanwei Electronics Co. Ltd., Data sheet MQ-5 sensor, 2008. [12] G. Li, X. Zhang, and S. Kawi, "Relationships between sensitivity, catalic atvivity, and surface area of SnO2 sensors," Sensors and Actuators B, Vol. 60, pp. 64-77, 1999.

Figure 4: Prototype of the wireless gas leakage detection system

REFERENCES [1] A. Mandelis, and C. Christofides, "Physics, Chemistry and technology of solid state gas sensor devices," Wiley, 1999. [2] J. Jaber, M. Mohsen, and B. Akash, "Energy analysis of Jordan's commercial sector," Energy Policy, Vol. 31(9), pp. 887-894, 2003 [3] Department of civil defense, "statistics book," 2007.

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