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Design and Development of Gas Leakage Monitoring System using Arduino

and ZigBee

Conference Paper · August 2014

DOI: 10.11591/eecsi.1.404

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Proceeding of International Conference on Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and Informatics (EECSI 2014), Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 20-21 August 2014

Design and Development of Gas Leakage

Monitoring System
using Arduino and ZigBee

Huan Hui Yan Yusnita Rahayu

Faculty of Electrical and Electronics Engineering Faculty of Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Universiti Malaysia Pahang Kampus Pekan, 26600 Pekan, Universiti Malaysia Pahang Kampus Pekan, 26600 Pekan,
Pahang Darul Makmur. Pahang Darul Makmur.
[email protected] [email protected]

Abstract—Gas leakage in industrial area causes many gas sensor network [3]. This paper presents the design and
health issues. Thus, to prevent such disasters happen, the development of a wireless gas leakage monitoring system
atmosphere of a workplace should be regularly monitored and by using Arduino and Zigbee.
controlled, in order to maintain the clean air environment. In this project, the monitoring system is developed
However, efforts in industrial air quality control have been
by using LabVIEW GUI. It is used to display the level of
impeded by the lack of science-based approaches to identify
and assess atmosphere air quality and level of dangerous gas. gas concentration in a place through another remote PC, and
Therefore, a monitoring system for gas leakage detection needs via internet server. Hence, it provides benefit to monitor the
to be developed. For the development of this system, the condition of a room in a safe distance.
combustible gas sensor (MQ9) was used in order to detect the Traditionally, the gas pipeline leakage monitoring
present of methane (CH4) and carbon monoxide gas (CO). system is realized by communication cable system,
This sensor will detect the concentration of the gas according therefore the cost of installation and maintenance are very
to the voltage output of sensor and operated in the alarm expensive and difficult as mentioned by J.Ding [4]. In order
system, autonomous control system and monitoring system by to overcome these restrictions, wireless sensor network is
using Arduino uno as the microcontroller for the whole system.
chosen as the best choice in the situation above. Some
Whereas the Zigbee will send the data reading from the gas
sensor to monitoring system that display on LabVIEW papers proposed different types of wireless sensor network
Graphical User Interface (GUI). Besides, user can take such as radio frequency (RF) transceiver [3], router and
immediate action upon the leakage occurs, else the gas supply coordinator [5], general packet radio service (GPRS)
and the system will shut down automatically within 10 minutes network [6] and Zigbee [2][4][7][8]. Nowadays, Zigbee is
to prevent the condition becoming worst. widely used in the gas leakage monitoring application field
for the real-time monitoring of the potential risk areas.
Index Terms—Gas leakage detection, Monitoring system, For the autonomous control system is as a
LabVIEW, Arduino, ZigBee, Gas sensor. preventive way to stop the situation becoming worst by
shutting down the process automatically. A. Shrivastava [9]
I. INTRODUCTION has proposed the system by using stepper motor to turn off
In our daily life, the environment and its condition the main power and the gas supply. Whereas in this model,
is very important for our health as it will impact the quality the relay switch is used to turn off the main power, and the
of life for all of earth’s inhabitants. Consequently, the issues electronic gas valve is used to turn off the gas supply. At the
from environment and the air quality in industrial area are end, when the gas leakage is successfully stopped then the
discussed to increase the alertness and responsibility whole system will return to initial stage with the help of
regarding the environment towards public and workers’ reset button.
health. The dangerous gases such as CH4, and CO will
bring harmful effect towards human as they may cause II. DESIGN OVERVIEW
explosions and CO poisoning accident in most industrial A. System traits
areas. The distance measured is probably 0 units of
Thus, a gas detector is invented to ease human on measurement from the interior sensor. It does not use
detecting the presence of those dangerous gases within an radiated or reflected spectral analysis. The distance to detect
area to prevent disaster happen. Nowadays, the gas detector the gas is not easy to determine, but it has a detect range of
has been innovated into various ways of detection, for 200 to 10000ppm. It depends on a few variables such as gas
example infrared thermal imaging gas leak detection [1], gas source, leakage rate, room size, air currents and sensor
leakage detection with monitoring system [2], and wireless

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Proceeding of International Conference on Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and Informatics (EECSI 2014), Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 20-21 August 2014

placement. Thus, this model is designed in portable and it Health Administration (OSHA) organization [2]. Table I
can be placed near to the gas pipeline. In Fig. 1 shows the shows the threshold value for gas concentration of CO and
design of the sensor location which is place in the room. CH4 in parts per million (ppm). Whereas for Table II,
represents the measured threshold value for the MQ-9 using
Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) [2].

TABLE I. THRESHOLD VALUE FOR GAS CONCENTRATION OF CO AND

CH4 GASES [10]
Value of gas concentration (ppm)
Carbon monoxide CO Methane CH4
20 - 2000 500 - 10000

TABLE II. OSHA MEASURED VALUE FOR MQ-9 USING LPG [2]
Fig. 1.The design of the sensor location.
Light Sensor Voltage
LPG
B. Hardware approach Level Indicator value in (V)
(ppm)
MQ-9
In this project there are two Arduino boards will be Safety Green <500 <342 <1.67
used as shown in Fig. 2. This microcontroller consists of Precaution
Yellow > = 500 > = 342 >=1.67
built-in analogue-digital converter (ADC), which able to < = 1000 < = 512 <=2.50
Dangerous Red > 1000 > 512 >2.50
read the analogue signal from the combustible gas sensor
MQ-9.
Based on the Table II, when the gas concentration
value is below the threshold value (less than 342), the green
1) Block diagram ot the model
indicator light is turn ON which represents safety mode.
Else if it is in between the threshold value of 342
and 512, the yellow indicator light is turning ON which
represents precaution mode. At the same time, the exhaust
fan is triggered to ventilate the leakage gas from the room.
In the worst case, when the gas concentration is above the
threshold values (more than 512), the red indicator light is
ON; the alarm system is triggered to alert the users that the
level of gas concentration is in the dangerous condition.
After 10 minutes, if there is no action taken from the users,
the main power supply and the gas supplies will shut down
automatically as the function of autonomous control system
to prevent the condition getting serious. In addition, users
are able to stop the process of the system manually during
emergency period.

3) Microcontroller
Arduino Uno R3 is a device that acts similarly to a
Fig. 2. Block diagram of the wireless gas leakage monitoring system. microcontroller unit. In this project, Arduino is the perfect
microcontroller due to its high performance and special
From this figure, Arduino (1) is connected to the features. The Arduino is an open-source electronic
alarm system, control system, display system (LCD) and prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use
Zigbee transmitter. On the other hand, Arduino (2) is hardware and software. It has 14 digital input or output pins
connected to monitoring system and Zigbee receiver only. (of which 6 can be used as PWM outputs), 6 analog inputs,
When the gas leakage is detected by the combustible gas a 16MHz crystal oscillator, a USB connection, a power jack,
sensor MQ-9, the analogue signal is converting into digital an ICSP header, and a reset button. It contains everything
signal with the ease Arduino (1) built-in conversion. Then needed to support the microcontroller; simply connect it to a
the processing signal is transmitted through Zigbee computer with a USB cable or power it with a AC-to-DC
transceiver to the LabVIEW GUI. adapter or battery to get started. The focus of the project is
on the programming of Arduino. It is the open source
2) Threshold value software used to create the language programming in order
Meanwhile, Arduino (2) will receive the data and to run the system. Therefore, make this microcontroller
compare to the threshold value of the gas concentration suitable for industrial control as compare to other
based on the standard value from Occupational Safety and microcontroller.

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Proceeding of International Conference on Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and Informatics (EECSI 2014), Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 20-21 August 2014

4) Zigbee tranceiver
Zigbee wireless protocol is a new wireless technology
guided by IEEE 802.15.4 Personal Area Network standard.
It is mainly designed for the wide range controlling
applications and to replace the existing non-standard
technologies. One of the main advantages of this Zigbee
communication is that it provides a noise free
communication, the amount of noise added in this type of
communication is very less compared to the other wireless
communications. In this project the Zigbee series 1 will be
used to ensure the data read from the gas sensor are
successfully transferred with the Zigbee receiver, where the
Zigbee is program using X-CTU software.
Fig. 3. The GUI of monitoring the gas leakage.
5) Modified Light indicator
A part from that, the LEDs has been modifying 2) Flow chart
into a reflected light indicator as shown in Table III below. The Arduino function is to read the output data from the
The reflected light indicator acts as visual alert signal for the gas sensor with the help of ZigBee transceiver. The VISA
users, so that inhalation of dangerous gas can be avoided. configuration com port is set in order to interface between
the hardware and the software part. Then based on the
TABLE III. THREE COLOURS OF LED TO INDICATE DIFFERENT threshold value was set, the sensor will keep sensing the gas
CONDITIONS. concentration, and trigger the external output system as
shown in Fig. 4.

Condition I Condition II Condition III

Green LED Yellow LED Red LED
indicates the shows that there represents serious
condition of the is small amount gas leakage
room is in safety of gas leakage in occurs in the
level. the room. room.

C. Software approach
1) Graphical user interface
Fig. 3represents the GUI of this model, which was
developed by using LabVIEW. In this figure, the GUI
shows three types of indicator lights as the different
conditions, in terms of safety level, warning, and the
dangerous level. The graph is used to display the gas
concentration versus time in every minute and the sensor’s
voltage output waveform. Besides, there is voltmeter to
show the voltage output from the gas sensor and the gas
tank to indicate the concentration of leakage gas. Fig. 4. Flow Chart for the Arduino Programming for MQ9.
Furthermore, the STOP button is used to stop the whole
system during the emergency period. On the other hand, the III. RESULT AND ANALYSIS
Visa resource panel is used to indicate the VISA For this model, the sensor is designed to place near to
configuration, and data transfer interfacing between the the gas pipeline in order to detect the leakage of gas. Thus,
Zigbee and LabVIEW, VISA configuration serial ports are the response of the gas leakage detection can be obtained
required. immediately and managed to obtain data from a scene of
accident and display it in the monitoring system.
A. Result on Zigbee module Receive Signal Strength Test
This model using ZigBee technology guided by IEEE
802.15.4 Personal Area Network standard. The Signal

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Proceeding of International Conference on Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and Informatics (EECSI 2014), Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 20-21 August 2014

strength of Xbee Series 1 is tested by using USB to UART

converter connected to it and test based on two conditions, Outdoor RSSI vs Distance
which are between the indoor of the building, and the 0
outdoor. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
-10
Based on the graph obtained in Fig. 5shows the graph of -20
RSSI value versus the distance, it is to test the signal -30

RSSI value (dBm)

strenght of the Zigbee used in this system. The longest
-40
detect range for the XBee is up to 9.77meter, the captured
-50
RSSI value is -86dBm. The longer the distance the weaker
is the signal strength. Besides, there is some noise -60
interference from the wi-fi of the building which will affect -70
the signal strength as well. In Table IV shows the actual -80
value obtained from the X-CTU software on testing the -90
signal strenght for Zigbee module. -100
Distance (meters)

Indoor RSSI vs Distance

Fig. 6. Graph on receive signal strength indicator of Zigbee module versus
0 distance outdoor of the building.
-10 0 4 5.6 8 9.77
TABLE V. INDOOR DISTANCE AND READING OF RSSI FOR
-20 ZIGBEE MODULE
-30
RSSI value (dBm)

Distance (meters) RSSI (dBm)

-40 0 -40
-50 10 -64
20 -66
-60 30 -74
-70 40 -75
-80 50 -76
60 -80
-90 70 -82
-100 80 -85
Distance (meters) 90 -87
100 -89

Fig. 5. Graph on receive signal strenght indicator of Zigbee module in

decibel-milliwatt(dBm) versus distance from indoor of one room to Based on the results in Table V, in order to
another. improve this monitoring system, this results can be use to
compare with the future advanced technology for the
TABLE IV. INDOOR DISTANCE AND READING OF RSSI FOR improvement based on their receive signal strength. As for
ZIGBEE MODULE. the value of RSSI between -40dBm to -76dBm is considered
Distance (meters) RSSI (dBm) strong and stable in signal strength.
0 -40
4 -76
5.6 -77 B. Graph Analysis
8 -88
9.77 -85 The graph in fig. 7 illustrates the data monitoring of the
gas concentration in parts per million versus time which
created by Microsoft Excel from the LabVIEW built-in
Fig. 6 depicts the longest detect range for outdoor export function. Based on the graph shows there is a leakage
which can detect range up to 100meter, and the captured of gas when the gas concentration increases. The effect of
RSSI value is -89dBm, but there are some bad signal actuation from the exhaust fan causes the gas concentration
received. Thus, the best distance is within 0 to 70m, which decreasing immediately as the precaution step to avoid
the signal consider stable. condition becoming worst. The gas concentration is
increases as the gas leakage is getting serious, and it reaches
the threshold value of dangerous condition, therefore the
system will send alarm signal to alert the users. Besides,
users are able to track the condition of the room in real time
and the all the reading is recorded as a back-up for
maintenance checkup purpose.

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Proceeding of International Conference on Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and Informatics (EECSI 2014), Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 20-21 August 2014

Detection of Gas Leakage

450
400
Gas Concentration (ppm)

350
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
0:11:48
0:11:39
0:11:40
0:11:41
0:11:42
0:11:43
0:11:44
0:11:45
0:11:46
0:11:47

0:11:49
0:11:50
0:11:51
0:11:52
0:11:53
0:11:54
0:11:55
0:11:56
0:11:57
Fig. 9. Gas leakage monitoring system shows the room in the safe
condition.

Time (minutes)

Fig. 7. Graph of gas leakage detection.

Detection of Gas Leakage in Dangerous

Condition
700

600
Gas Concentration (ppm)

500

400

300 Fig. 10. Gas leakage monitoring system shows the room in the warning
condition.
200

100 When there is small amount of gas leakage detected,

the exhaust fan is triggered to ventilate the gases out from
0 the room.

Time (minutes)

Fig. 8. Graph of gas leakage detection in serious condition.

The above graph Fig. 8 shows the leakage of gas

concentration reaches the threshold value of dangerous
condition, which exceed 512ppm therefore the system will
send alarm signal to alert the users.

C. Results on GUI

Fig. 9, Fig. 10 and Fig.11 present the gas leakage

monitoring system during safety, precaution, and dangerous
condition respectively. The model was tested by using LPG, Fig. 11. Gas leakage monitoring system shows the room in the dangerous
condition.
the increasing value of gas concentration and voltage output
shows there is present of gas detected.. Based on the GUI,
When there are large amount of gases leak is
there are voltmeter and gas tank provided, to ease user’s to
detected, the alarm signal will triggered to alert to users. At
observe the level of gas leak.
the same time in the monitoring part, will inform the user
upon leakage and asked for immediate action.

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 Proceeding of International Conference on Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and Informatics (EECSI 2014), Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 20-21 August 2014

IV. CONCLUSION
As a conclusion, this gas leakage monitoring
system by using Arduino and Zigbee was successfully
developed and works well. There are various type of project
using the same wireless concept in different field of
application but in this systemconsists of many features
compared to other projects, such as the monitoring system
developed by using LabVIEW GUI, Zigbee transceiver used
to monitor the gas concentration, gas detector with LCD
display, alarm system built by using buzzer to alert the
workers, and in the autonomous control system used to
trigger the exhaust fan automatically in order to ventilate the
dangerous gases in the room as well as auto shut down the
main power and the gas supply within 10 minutes upon the
Fig. 12. Online monitoring the gas leakage system.
leakage occurs to prevent the condition getting serious. Last
In order to monitor the gas leakage via internet, the but not least, this system was built for the purpose of life-
client computer must have installed the LabVIEW run-time saving that many people in a wide range of industries rely
engine for viewing and controlling through the monitoring on to alert them to an explosive or hazardous atmosphere
system as shown in Fig.12. and prevent any disaster happen.
Next, the overall model functioning was controlled ACKNOWLEDGMENT
and interfaced with the LabVIEW software with the set up The authors would like to thank for the supports from
of block diagram as shown in Fig. 13. The VISA resources Universiti Malaysia Pahang under the project RDU 110315,
name is set to specified setting and the baud rate of this and Research and innovation Department of Universiti
model is set to 9600 from the Arduino and Zigbee. Malaysia Pahang for providing financial support.
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