Liquefied Petroleum Gas Level Monitoring and Leakage Detection Using Internet of Things

Abstract

Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) can be used for various purposes, such as cooking in homes, industries and hotels, heating and vehicle fuel. LPG is a mixture of simple propane or butane and a flammable combination of hydrocarbon gases utilized in cooking equipment. It is one of the basic needs for both urban and rural areas. Use of LPG has made human life easier and cooking faster with less smoke. Nowadays, there is a problem of demand and supply of cylinder in both rural and urban areas because of the ujwal scheme and the COVID-19 pandemic situation. There is no proper system that monitors the consumption of LPG. There are lots of computational technologies in Internet of Things (IoT) that can be used for developing the system for monitoring the gas level and sending alert messages to users. Many solutions are possible using these future computational technologies. The proposed system applies one such solution to the problem. Primarily, load cell is used for collecting the weight of the gas cylinder and a secondary IoT module based on which Raspberry Pi is employed for communicating the data collected from the load cell and in turn sending that data to the mobile and system. The proposed system also sends the alerts for users to book new cylinders if the quantity of gas is less than the threshold value in the LPG cylinder. The system consists of a sensor unit and a controller unit, which are integrated with the SMS alert system to the mobile phone. Every sensor unit consists of one sensor, a power connection. A part of the sensor is connected to the gas supply, and the data is sent to the controller unit. The sensor unit senses cylinder weight through the load cell, then forwards the weight to Raspberry Pi. The weight of the cylinder is in analog form and is then converted into digital form. The weight is compared with certain given threshold values, and respective alert messages will be sent through the GSM (global system for mobile communications) module. An authorized person will get an alert message to the digital device, such as a mobile device. Then the person can take further action for booking the gas cylinder. The proposed system makes use of MQ6 sensors to detect gas leakages. The proposed system can also be used to determine the proper quantity of the gas present in the cylinder at the time of delivery by the distributor.