Gas monitoring and power cut-off system for underground mines

Abstract

The Gas sensors are used to detect several hazardous gases from burning smoke, fumes (soldering) and etc. Presently, the electronics sensors are playing important role in the detection of various physical parameters. These sensors have got enormous contribution towards the research in the field of mining domain. This work contributes to the design & application of analytic devices and circuits, particularly, for detecting the presence of hazardous gases in the various types of critical environments. The Gas sensors are under-developing approach in the field of research and yet require more work so as to obtain maximum throughput for the mining based applications. There have been lots of works done in the field of gas sensing e.g. gas sensor manufacturing, sensor monitoring circuit designing, gas sensor miniaturization etc but they have their own merits and demerits. The proposed gas monitoring system plays a vital role in monitoring the gases in the mines. This work includes designing and implementation of a system that continuously monitors the concentration of methane (CH <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">4</sub> ) and carbon-monoxide (CO) gas in the underground mines, which automatically cuts off the power supply of the particular zone in an underground mine, when the concentration of CH <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">4</sub> exceeds more than the permissible limit decided by the user. For better accuracy, we propose the cross checking of the concentration of the gases from two or more sensors. The present work is devoted on the designing part of the sensor circuit which is dedicated for the better safety environments and need of the miners and mining area. This system facilitates to fulfill the needs of the monitoring of the underground mining environment. The system is designed with all kind of precautions so that it is better suited for mining area.