RESEARCH ARTICLE | NOVEMBER 11 2019

Design and analysis of safety hazardous gas instruments for

laboratory experiments 
Siti Sendari  ; Mokh Sholihul Hadi; Yuni Rahmawati; Nur Cholis Hadi; Fauzy Satrio Wibowo;
Danang Arengga Wibowo; Whyna Agustin; Ira Kumalasari; Indriyani Rachman; Toru Matsumoto

AIP Conf. Proc. 2173, 020006 (2019)

https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5133921

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26 April 2024 04:19:40

 Design and Analysis of Safety Hazardous Gas Instruments
for Laboratory Experiments
Siti Sendari1, a), Mokh Sholihul Hadi1, Yuni Rahmawati1, Nur Cholis Hadi1, Fauzy
Satrio Wibowo1, Danang Arengga Wibowo1, Whyna Agustin1, Ira Kumalasari1,
Indriyani Rachman2, and Toru Matsumoto2
1
Department of Electrical Engineering, Universitas Negeri Malang, Jl. Semarang No. 5, Malang 65141, Indonesia
2
Department of Life and Environment Engineering, the University of Kitakyushu, 1-1Hibikino, Wakamatsu-ku,
Kitakyushu 808-0135, Japan
a)
Corresponding author: [email protected]

Abstract. In this paper, a safety of hazardous gas instruments for laboratory experiments was designed using a
microcontroller and connected to personal computer to save the data. Here, the carbon monoxide gas (CO) and methane
gas (CH4) sensors are applied to the systems to measure the concentration of gases in case of laboratory. Commonly, the
gas instruments are used in object tested directly without considering the flow of gases toward the user. Comparing to that

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system, in order to protect the users’ safety from of direct contact with the gases, inlet-outlet pipes and fill-discharge tubes
are used in this proposed system. The performance of the proposed system is analysed trough experiments. Some results
were presented according to the time of activating inlet to inject the gas. Thus, the effect of changing the gas concentration
was analysed.

Keywords – Gas instrument, Laboratory experiments, Methane gas, Carbon monoxide gas, Safety operating, Concentration
measurement.

I. INTRODUCTION
Some of gases have unique characteristics, which cannot be seen using normal eyes or smell it. Two of gases
which have poissonic characters, i.e., Methane gas (CH4) and Carbon Monoxide (CO), should be treated carefully.
CH4 gas is produced when certain types of microorganisms decompose organic matter under anaerobic conditions [1].
It is produced naturally at the time of decomposition of biomass. However, the application of CH4 gas should be
carefully since it is flammable and produces carbon dioxide (CO2) as another hazardous gas [2]. Meanwhile, the CO
gas is produced by imperfect combustion process [3]. This case usually occur in the machine and decomposition
process of waste. However, those gases can still be measured to identify their existence using certain set of instruments,
which could help the human to understand the patterns and characteristics depended on the purposes, such as, research
purposes, safety or security environment purposes [4][5]. Therefore, the development of ideal instrument for gas
measurement should be developed based on its characteristics.
There are many types of gas instruments intended for certain measurements [6]. Lately, the development of gas
instrument has been developed using various methods, such as, dew-point [7], in-point and scanning method. A
method of measurement using in-point could be built using a hand held instrument, i.e., laser methane detector (LMD),
which is placed in a fix chamber representing a landfill in lab scale [8]. In case of scanning method, the measurement
was done continuously in site of landfill using LMD strung between two poles with wire. This research is focusing a
method how to measure gas in lab scale compared with that in landfill site by using manufactured instrument. Beside
of only one certain gas is observed, the price of this instrument is also expensive. Low cost gas instrument can be
developed using a micro controller as the main processor [9]. So, various gases could be measured using several
sensors installed to the micro controller. Here, the measured data is compared using two chambers to observe the

Advances in Electrical and Electronic Engineering: From Theory to Applications (Series 2)

AIP Conf. Proc. 2173, 020006-1–020006-9; https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5133921
Published by AIP Publishing. 978-0-7354-1920-9/$30.00

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effect of temperature toward sensor output. Here, one chamber is filled in gas with various temperatures, while the
other one is used as reference.
In order to collect the data from sensor, a micro controller can be connected to personal computer using serial
communication. This method improves the ability to characterize the sensors output. One software for acquisition,
which is linked to Excel spreadsheet and also can be plotted in real time without reprogramming when connected to
Arduino interface, is using PLX-DAQ [10].
Comparing with those methods explained above, the objectives of these studies is to observe the performance of
developing a gas instrument using flux profile with a chamber, which can be used for lab scale. Instead of determining
the gas concentration based on instrument available, the gas concentration is controlled by various time of filling in
gas to the chamber. The profile of gas concentration is observed when the gas is injected at a certain time. This
instrument is developed using a micro controller as the main processing connected to PC for data logging, here PLX-
DAQ is used. This method demonstrated the ability to measure the gas continuosly.
Thus, this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes the method of developing system, and Section
3 describes results and discussion. Conclusions are devoted at Section 4.

II. MATERIAL AND METHODS

The gas instrumentation has been developed with several unique features, including data logging for monitoring
gas. Hence, the method is devided into the method of gas measurement and developing the system, consisting of (a)
Diagram Block; (b) Design Instrument; and (c) Flowchart System. The proposed system is shown in Fig. 1 following
with the whole description of the proposed system.

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1 Gas
Monitoring 1. Gas chamber
2 System 2. CO gas sensor
3.CH4 gas sensor
3 4. Electrical valve
5. Pipe in
10 6. Pipe out
4 7. Communication port
9 8. Microcontroller
9. Function buttons
10. LCD screen
8

5 6 7
FIGURE 1. The designed system

A. Measurement of Gas Flux by Chamber

Rate flow per unit area is defined as flux in fluid dynamics, which is related to density of gas. Gas concentration
inside the camber is diffused from tube. Here, the system is developed using small chamber built from tube with
dimension of height is 13 cm and diameter is 11 cm. The gas is injected to the chamber using gas inlet valve and
exhausted from it using gas exhaust valve. Gas flux is related to gas concentration as shown as following equation [8]:

F = U 9$¨&¨W¨7 (1)

where F is gas flux (g.m-2.h-1), U is gas density (g.m-3), V is volume of chamber (m3), A is area of chamber (m2),
¨&  ¨W LV VORSH RI FKDQJH RI JDV FRQFHQWUDWLRQ SSP  RYHU WLPH K  ¨7 DYHUDJH WHPSHUDWXUH LQ FKDPEHU oC).

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According to the equation 1, the gas source is injected to the chamber via pipe in using electrical valve controlled ON
by a micro controller at a certain time. Thus, the change of gas concentration could be known. In order to detect and
measure the gas concentration semi-conductor gas sensors can be used, which act as variable resistors depending on
gas leakage. Due to hazardous gases, this measurement is designed. Here, CO gas is measured using MQ-07 sensor
module[11], while CH4 gas sensor is using TGS-2611 sensor module [12].

B. Developing of Gas Measurement

The proposed system is developed using ten parts, i.e., (1) Gas chamber, (2) CO gas sensor, (3) CH4 gas sensor,
(4) Electrical valve, (5) Pipe in, (6) Pipe out, (7) Communication port, (8) Micro controller, (9) Function buttons (up,
down, next and back button), and (10) LCD, as shown in Fig. 1.
The designed system works using a micro controller as the main processor, here Arduino Uno is used. It converts
the data sent by CH4 and CO gas sensors to be shown in LCD screen. Selecting appropriate sensor data to be converted,
i.e., CH4 sensor or CO sensor is choosen using function buttons. Then, gas concentration of gas is injected to the
chamber in a certain time. Different duration of gas injection results various concentration of gases to be analysed.
The time to injected gas can be selected as 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, or 60 seconds, which is controlled by micro controller
by switching ON the electrical valve of pipe in. The process of exhausting the gas in chamber is controlled by
switching ON the electrical valve of pipe out. In order to extend the ability to measure and monitor concentration of
gases, the system is connected to personal computer (PC) or laptop via a serial communication as data logging feature.
Meanwhile, the gas flux for measuring purposes is monitored using PC via serial communication (Port PC). The
diagram block is shown in Fig. 2.

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FIGURE 2. Diagram block of proposed system FIGURE 3. MQ-7 gas sensitivity characteristic

1) CO Gas Sensor

The CO gas sensor is designed using MQ-7 module, which has high sensitivity on carbon monoxide, which can
detect carbon monoxide from 20 ~ 2000 ppm. Based on its datasheet, MQ-07 has stable condition and long life span.
The graph in Fig. 3 shows the Rs/Ro ratio in CO gas sensor [11]. While Ro is sensor resistance at 100 ppm in the clean
air, Rs is sensor resistance at different CO gas concentration.
A standard circuit of MQ-7 module consists of 2 parts, i.e., (1) the heating circuit with time control function, and
(2) the signal output circuit, which can accurately respond to the changes of surface resistance of the sensor. A series-
wound is used to determine the concentration of gas in a given area. The surface resistance of the sensor (Rs) is
obtained through voltage signal output of the load resistance RL as follows,

Rs/RL = (Vc-VRL) / VRL (2)

where, Vc is supply voltage, while VRL is voltage of load.

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 2) CH4 Sensor

TGS2611 is a module of semiconductor type gas sensor, which combines sensitivity to CH4 gas with low power
consumption [12]. It requires small amount of heat current around 56mA for the operation. The detection range from
the sensor is around 500 to 10.000 ppm. Here, the calibration of the sensor was using Rs/Ro ratio based on the datasheet
as described on Fig. 4, the Rs/Ro ratio value affects the amount gas concentration.

100 100

10 10 Air
Air
Ethanol
Iso-butane

Rs/Ro
Rs/Ro

Ethanol
Hydrogen Hydrogen
1 Iso-butane 1
Methane Methane

0.1 0.1
100 1000 10000 100 1000 10000

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Gas Concentration (ppm) Gas Concentration (ppm)

FIGURE 4. TGS 2611 Gas sensitivity characteristic

Regarding to the graph in Fig. 4, the Rs/Ro ratio would be at 1 when the gas concentration is 5000 ppm. Thus, the
calculation of Rs/Ro ratio could be done using equation 2.

C. Flowchart System
The developed system works as the program, which is embedded to the micro controller. It is represented as the
flowchart system shown in Fig. 5. After initialization, the system asks user to chooce which sensor will be activated
by selecting appropriate menu displayed on LCD. Then, gas can be injected to the chamber via electric valve in. Gas
concentration can be arranged by setting the time of switching ON the electrical valve of pipe in. Here, user can
choose the setting by 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, or 60 seconds. Micro controller converts the sensor data to the appropriate
gas concentration values in ppm and %volume. The data is also sent to the PLX-DAQ installed to PC via serial
communication as the data logging. The gas concentration can be reduced or drained by exhausting the gas chamber
by switching ON the electrical valve of pipe out.

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 Start

Initialization

MENU:
1. Inject (Gas to Chamber)
2. Drain (Chamber)
3. Exit

No No No
Inject? Drain? Exit?

Yes Yes Yes

Choose Time Process Valve Out

Process Valve In

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Read Sensor Data

Process Data
Display to LCD
and Send data to PC

End

Stop ?

FIGURE 5. Flowchart System

D. Evaluating method
The evaluating method of the developed system works as program is done using several methods as follows.
Firstly, the black box method is used to evaluate the function of each part of hardware module as shown by diagram
block in Fig. 2. The second method, which is used is t-test method. It is used to evaluate the gas, which is injected to
the chamber in a certain time. Here, the gas flux is tested with several time settings provided, i.e., gas flux of chamber
with 0 second (means clear chamber), it is compared to that of chamber with 10 seconds; this process is continued for
remain time settings. The third, the average of gas concentration will be compared with manual calcullation to measure
the error occurs. The trial is done in 10 experiments.

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 III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
The results of evaluation methods are described as follows.

A. Hardware Testing
The developed system is shown in Fig. 6. The functionality of the hardware system are tested using black box
method [13][14], which done for 10 parts consisting of (1) Gas chamber, (2) CO gas sensor, (3) CH4 gas sensor, (4)
Electrical valve, (5) Pipe in, (6) Pipe out, (7) Communication port, (8) Micro controller, (9) Function buttons (up,
down, next and back button), and (10) LCD. The functionality is shown in Table 1.

TABLE 1. Functionality of Hardware

No Block Function
1 Gas Chamber Can keep gas and no leakage gases, here lorored gas tester is used
2 CO gas sensor Send analog data when environment changed by CO
3 CH4 gas sensor Send analog data when environment changed by CH4
4 Electrical valve Logic match with data sent by microcontroller
5 Pipe in Pipe can inject the gas to chamber
6 Pipe out Pipe can exhaust the gas from chamber
7 Communication port Send data to PC
8 Micro controller Read data from analog input, Read data from digital input,
Send data to digital output, Send data to serial communication
9 Function buttons Read logic of function buttons :
-Up, Down, Back, Next
10 LCD Send character from micro controller to LCD

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FIGURE 6. Developed system and an example of data shown

The errors are analyzed by the equation below. Where, “E” is errors found (%), “n” is number of testers, and “L”
is problems found (%).
E = 100 x (1 െ (1 െ L) ^ n) (3)

According to 10 experiments, each block in Table 1 shows that its function works appropriately, so it means E is
0%.

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 B. t-test Method
Here, t-test method is used to evaluate the gas flux, which is injected to the chamber in a certain time. Here, the
setting times are done for 0, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60 seconds of injected gas to the chamber. Comparison is carried
out as follows. Injected gas with 0 second is compared to that with 10 seconds; then, injected gas with 10 seconds is
compared with that with 20 seconds. These processes are continued for remain time settings.

1) CO Gas Testing

Regarding to the sensor characteristic shown in Fig. 3, the sensor resistance Rs is decreased along with CO gas
absorption. Thus, decreasing of sensor resistance indicates that the output voltage is increased. Sensitivity
characteristics of MQ7 can be given as the following equation
ܴ = ‫ܥܭ‬í݊ (4)

Where, ܴ represents ܴs/ܴo, while Rs= sensor resistance at various concentrations of gases, Ro = sensor resistance
at 100ppm CO in the clean air. Here, ݊ = 1.4, while K is 25.12 as constant of the sensor material. C is CO concentration
in ppm. So, the relation between output analog voltage obtained at the sensor output and the concentration in ppm can
be determined by equation as follows [15],
(‫ = )݉݌݌‬100.468[( 5/ ܸR í@í (5)

Gas testing is carried out with 10 experiments. The results are analyzed according to the mean and variance values.
Then comparison is evaluated from p value of one tail. Here, the sample of data logging function was taken in 0 to 60
seconds injected of CO gas concentration in gas chamber. The results are shown in Table 2. Regarding to the p-value,
it can be seen that p values are less than 0.05, which means that the flux gas according to time setting of gas injection
show different respond. It can be said that the respond is different significantly.

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TABLE 2. T-Test of CO Gas Testing
Time settings Mean (ppm) Variance p value
0 19,40 0,02 -
10 26,43 6,99 1,32E-42
20 59,98 99,16 1,44E-53
30 94,40 56,71 4,59E-61
40 99,20 85,00 9,11E-05
50 125,37 156,71 1,58E-35
60 134,53 502,95 4,63E-04

160 160
140 y = 2.08x + 17.49 140
120 120 y = 0,764x + 33,193
100 100
ppm
ppm

80 80
60 60
40 40
20 20
0 0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Time (seconds) Time (seconds)

(a) (b)
FIGURE 7. Respon diagram of sensors over time setting: (a) CO; (b) CH4.

Furthermore, the respond of CO gas sensor toward the gas concentration over time setting is represented as linear
diagram as shown in Fig. 7(a). The respond can be modeled as y = 2.08x + 17.49, which means y is gas concentration
while x is time setting. The linear respond obtained here is because the range of CO testing is small.

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 2) CH4 Gas Testing

CH4 gas testing is carried out with 10 experiments. The results are also analyzed according to the mean values and
variance values. Then comparison is evaluated from p value of one tail. Here, the sample of data logging function was
taken in 0 to 60 seconds injected of CH4 gas concentration in gas chamber. The results are shown in Table 3. Regarding
to the p-value, it can be seen that p values are less than 0.05, which means that the flux gas according to time setting
of gas injection show different respond. It can be said that the respond is different significantly.

TABLE 3. T-Test of CH4 Gas Testing

Time settings Mean (ppm) Variance p value
0 28,53 0,27 2,07E-58
10 42,26 11,69 7,50E-28
20 53,08 43,47 1,38E-02
30 55,13 32,99 1,38E-02
40 66,49 69,91 1,52E-20
50 71,32 71,24 7,99E-05
60 75,99 69,90 1,28E-04

Furthermore, the respond of CH4 gas sensor toward the gas concentration over time setting is represented as linear
diagram as shown in Fig. 7(b). The response can be modeled as y = 0.76x + 33.19, which means y is gas concentration
while x is time setting.

C. The Advantages of Proposed System

Generally, the gas instrument used in the object is tested directly without considering the gas flow to the user. This
can cause a risk if the user continuously interacts with dangerous gases. This proposed system is designed to overcome

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this problem. Here, users can use the instrument using the inlet-outlet pipes and fill-discharge tubes without direct
contact with the gas. so, the measurement process can be carried out safely. Table 4 show the comparison between
purposed system and similar product that commonly used to meassure CO and CH4.

TABLE 4. Comparison with Similar Peoducts

No Comparison Aspect BX615 Proposed System
1 Display

2 Available for CO measurement ¥ ¥

3 Available for CH4 measurement ¥ ¥
4 Easy to move ¥
5 Easy to calibrate ¥ ¥
6 There is an artificial environment × ¥
(because of the calibration inside the chamber)
7 Safety (undirect contact with gas) × ¥

IV. CONCLUSIONS
A safety of hazardous gas instruments for laboratory experiments to observe CO and CH4 is designed, while
common gas instruments are used in object tested directly without considering the flow of gases toward the user. The
designed system is developed using a microcontroller and connected to personal computer to save the data. Here, the
users can use the instrument using inlet-outlet pipes and fill-discharge tubes as an artificial environment without direct
contact toward gases. Since the observation used low concentration, the performance of the proposed system shows
linear responds, which can be modeled using linear regression.

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 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank the Directorate of Higher Education of Indonesia Government for supporting this research
under grant Collaboration Research and International Publishing. This research is a collaboration result between
State University of Malang and the University of Kitakyushu.

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