Smart Liquefied Petroleum Gas System
Abstract
The motivation for our project is the need to save fuel. LPG is a non-renewable source of energy, hence it is important that we need to use it judiciously. It is observed that a single household sometimes has multiple gas connections. This is simply because they are not aware of their fuel consumption rate. Our idea addresses this problem. The proposed idea aims to make the household consumer aware of their usage and thereby helping to reduce the LPG consumption. The number of deaths due to explosion of gas cylinders has been increasing in recent years. Thus there is need for a system to detect and also prevent leakage of LPG. The proposed project also implements leak detection and intimates the house owner of the same.
Keywords
Download Options
Introduction
LPG, first produced in 1910 by Dr. Walter Snelling is a mixture of Commercial Propane and Commercial Butane having saturated as well as unsaturated hydrocarbons. Because of the versatile nature of LPG it is used for many needs such as domestic fuel, industrial fuel, automobile fuel, heating, illumination etc. and the demand for LPG is on an exponential raise day by day. The leaked gases when ignited may result in explosion.
Before the development of electronic household gas detectors in the 1980s and 90s, gas presence was detected with a chemically infused paper that changed its color when exposed to the gas. Since then, many technologies and devices have been developed to detect, monitor, and alert the leakage of a wide array of gases. Today, booking an LPG cylinder is just a text message away. Petroleum companies have launched the customer-friendly service called IVRS (Interactive voice response) technique for their customers.
Hence the requirement of an efficient system to measure and display the level of LPG is inevitable, which may be used for domestic purposes. Here we intend to propose a microcontroller based system where a gas sensor (MQ6) is used to detect dangerous gas leaks. This unit is incorporated into an alarm unit, to sound an alarm or give a visual indication of the LPG leakage. The sensor has good sensitivity combined with a quick response time at low cost. If leakage is detected, message to the authorized person or family member using cellular network called GSM is sent automatically. It estimates how many days the LPG cylinder will run. If the number of days remaining goes less than 10 days it automatically books the cylinder by sending a text message to the dealer and it also informs the user to refill the cylinder when less than 2 days are left.