Mangalore: Students develop device to book LPG cylinder automatically, stop leakage

DHNS

Mangalore, 16 Jun 2012: Four students of Department of Telecommunication of P A College of Engineering have come out with a project ‘Automatic LPG cylinder booking and leakage management system,’ which uses GSM technology to book the LPG cylnder and to alert the consumers when the gas starts leaking by just sending SMSes.

 

The students who came out with the project are P K Aravinda, Shreeinivasa K, Shrikanth S Patil and Vivek Hegde under the guidance of Prof Divya P Shetty.

 

According to the students, the project “Automatic LPG cylinder Booking and Leakage Management system” will ensure a safe, secured, provisioned and comfort services for the consumers of LPG.

 

The project is designed based on modular approach which is easy to analyze as LPG cylinder booking unit and the gas leakage monitoring unit at the consumer end and server system unit at the distributor side.

 

They said “Once the LPG cylinder is empty, the consumers have the task of booking for replacement of the same with new filled LPG cylinder. Many a time, the users are unaware of the level of gas in the cylinder so they fail to book in time, resulting in inconvenience.

 

On the other hand, LPG is classified as hazardous material because of its flammable properties and explosive potential when stored under pressure. The project attempts to mitigate and minimize the consequence of gas leakage and facilitate with better services by automating the system.”

 

The LPG cylinder booking unit comprises mainly the weight sensor, which is coupled to the 8051 micro controller. When the weight of the cylinder reaches below the predetermined level/value, the GSM modem interfaced to microcontroller sends booking request to the distributor.

 

The distributor will verify for the validity of the customer in the data base and accordingly an acknowledgement message is sent through GSM modem to the user automatically, the students said.

 

In the LPG leak monitoring system, the MQ6 gas sensor is sensible to LPG, isobutene propane gas. This sensor sends a digital pulse to the microcontroller when gas is being leaked. Hence, an alerting message sent through the GSM to the user and a buzzer sound is activated in the room.

 

Simultaneously, LPG regulator fitted to the cylinder is automatically turned off using a relayed DC motor to avoid more leakage from the cylinder, they added.

 

The students said “the 8051 microcontroller is the heart of the client system.  All other components are interfaced so that they are monitored accordingly. The embedded c (Keil vision assembler language) is used here to programme the 8051.”