Students design sensor to detect LPG cylinder leaks

BENGALURU: TO prevent accidental explosions and fires caused by domestic gas cylinders, two Bengaluru siblings, both teenagers, have designed a sensor which can detect gas leaks and alert people in advance.Purushottam N (14), a Class 9 student of Government High School, Uttarahalli, and Shravani N (16), a first-year Pre-university Commerce student of Dayanand Sagar College, designed the sensor to exhibit it at the college’s talent search competition.

Explaining about the project, Purushottam said, “To solve the problem of accidental fires and explosions of gas cylinders, we used Arduino Uno, a micro-controller, MQ5 sensor, which exclusively senses LPG gas, LCD, a potentiometer (an instrument for measuring voltage) to increase and decrease the voltage of the LCD, and an LED and a buzzer for the output. If there is a gas leak, the LED turns red and the servomotor will turn off the cylinder automatically.”

“So, human intervention is not required and the buzzers will also set off. Our objective is to save women, especially mothers. It would be nice if we can add the GSM technology also because then it will also be able to send messages, too. We would like to develop the prototype further,” he told Express.
The teenagers’ innovation gains significance from the fact that the total number of accidental deaths from cooking gas cylinder and stove explosions in India was 3,667 during 2015, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. In Karnataka, this was 359 during 2015, which is 9.79 per cent of the total number of accidental deaths in such explosions in India during the year. Of the total figure of 3,667 dead, 2,736, or 74.6 per cent, were women.

Shruthi Shashikumar, Purushottam’s Computer Science teacher, said, “We have tied up with an NGO, Learning Links Foundation. We have an active classroom lab in the school and he designed it there. We suggested that he add the motor to it. He had thought about this project long back. We have participated in many other competitions like Green Hackathon and Maker Faire. After that he added the motor, too, to the project.”  

The teenagers’ parents -- Krishnamurthy N, an autodriver, and Kalavathi N, a tailor -- said they felt proud of their children’s achievement and hoped that their innovation would help bring down the deaths due to LPG leaks.