Development of Microcontroller Based Gas Leakage Detector with Dual SMS Alert

Abstract

The prevailing treat to lives and property by the usage of gas for cooking, etc, and the rapidly increasing evolution in new technologies worldwide, a novel approach utilizing dual communication network providers is applied to alert users in the event of leakage of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG). In this work, a prototype gas leakage detector, based on dedicated Peripheral Interface Controller (PIC), sensitive MQ-6 gas sensor, GSM/GPRS SIM900 and discrete components is developed and tested. Glo and MTN network service providers were selected for the design. Both indoor and laboratory tests were conducted where the results indicate gas concentration levels of 372 ppm to 255 ppm were measured to display a message on Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) and  trigger audio alarm at instances of 2.42 secs and 8.35 secs in locations of 5 cm and 30 cm away from gas source respectively. Finally, the viability test proved satisfactory as it indicates that whenever a particular network fails, the second network was available to receive the SMS message adequately. This could be applied in homes, restaurants, etc where cooking gas is often used. Future enhancements should include the deployment of all available communication network service providers to augment for the limitation of the only two networks in this work.