Prevention System for Hazardous Environments

Abstract: Industries such as processing & conditioning (gas) have personnel being associated with activities
(or machinery) involving flammable materials, toxic gases, temperature intolerances, etc. A few others like
purification where apparatuses suffer degradation due to shocks, prolonged vibration and position tilt
exaggerate the vulnerability to hazards. Safety instrumentation such as PLC (Programmable Logic Controllers)
interfaced sensors takes care of the issues to prevent any hazard. However, due to exorbitantly higher costs
of implementation, maintenance and up-gradation this area is often overlooked at in many processes. The
current project based on Arduino board aims at providing cheap yet efficient safety instrumentation system
providing performance (speed, power) and tolerance (shock, radiation) at par with present PLC-based
systems.

Components
1. Arduino Uno R3 Atmega 328P based microcontroller board. 14 digital i/o pins (6 for PWM o/p), 6
analog I/p, 16 MHz, USB connection, power jack & reset button
2. Sensors:
a. Flame sensor: Detects fire source or other light sources of the wavelength in the range of
760nm - 1100 nm. Based on the YG1006 sensor which is a high speed and high sensitive NPN
silicon phototransistor.
b. PIR Sensor: The PIR (Passive Infra-Red) Sensor is a pyroelectric device that detects motion by
measuring changes in the infrared levels emitted by surrounding objects. 1 bit o/p
c. Accelerometer (ADXL335): Complete 3-axis accelerometer with signal conditioned voltage
outputs. The product, measures acceleration with a minimum full-scale range of 3 g.
d. Temperature Sensor (LM35): O/p proportional to temperature, scale factor is .01V/C, -50 to
150 degree Centigrade range, 5V operation.
e. Gas sensor: MQ series.
3. L293D -- Quadruple high-current drivers
4. Buzzer, relay

Working
The safety levels for temperature, gas concentration levels and tilt angle are set from the control room. The
sensors continuously transduce the respective physical variables of interest and feed to the Atmega 328P

Prevention System for Hazardous Environments

controller which monitors them. If the inputs from flame sensor is HIGH, system shutdown occurs. For PIR
sensors alarms are raised on human presence. For temperature & gas concentration levels, appropriate
response as shown in the flowchart is generated. Similar responses to shocks and position levels. If the
variables can be controlled without human intervention the controller can take appropriate action to check
any disturbance from specified limits. However, if the levels are beyond control by controller but can be
controlled by human intervention alarms may be raised. In the case shutdown and evacuation alarms also
get generated to not to further deteriorate the situation.

Phase-I
1. Identification of requirements and selection of hardware.
2. Flowchart of algorithm
3. Black-box representation and interfacing of hardware