Automated Control System for Air Pollution Detection in Vehicles

T.JAYASREE,

B.TECH II YEAR,

VEMU INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY.

Abstract— Vehicles have become an integral part of also to all other living beings on earth.
every one's life. Situations and circumstances demand the Air pollutants that are inhaled have
usage of serious impact on human health
vehicles in this fast paced urban life. As a coin has two
affecting the lungs and the respiratory
sides, this has its own effects, one of the main side
system; they are also taken up by the
effects being air
pollution. Every vehicle will have emission but the blood and pumped all round the body.
problem occurs when it is beyond the standardized These pollutants are also deposited on
values. The soil, plants, and in the water, further
primary reason for this breach of emission level being the contributing to human exposure and
incomplete combustion of fuel supplied to engine, which also affecting the sea
is life. Vehicles are one of the major
due to the improper maintenance of vehicles. This contributors to air pollution apart
emission from vehicles cannot be completely avoided
from industries. The main pollutants
but, it definitely
from vehicles are the oxides of carbon
can be controlled. With the evolvement of semi-
conductor sensors for detecting the various gases, this and nitrogen, which can be easily
paper aims at detected these days with the help of
using those semi-conductor sensors at the emission semi conductor gas sensors.
outlets of vehicles which detects the level of pollutants Therefore, in this paper an idea is
and also suggested, which would be very
indicates this level with a meter. When the pollution/ helpful in reducing the amount of
emission level shoots beyond the already set threshold pollution from vehicles. The rest of
level,
the paper is organized as follows.
there will be a buzz in the vehicle to indicate that the
Section II gives the background
limit period of time , a cushion time given for the driver
to park information and a brief note about
his/her vehicle. During this time period, the GPS starts the various research activities, on gas
locating the nearest service stations. After the timer runs sensors and monitoring systems.
out, the fuel supplied to the engine will be cut-off and the Section III discusses about the various
vehicle has to be towed to the mechanic or to the nearest blocks of the proposed system.
service station. The synchronization and execution of the Section IV concludes the paper with
entire process is monitored and controlled by a micro an idea to implement the same as a
controller. This paper, when augmented as a real time
real time project.
project, will benefit the society and help in reducing the
II. LITERATURE SURVEY
air pollution.
Over the years, there have been
Keywords— Air Pollution, Sensors, threshold level, several regulations made by the
GPS, Microcontroller. Government to control the mission
from vehicles; most of them being
I. INTRODUCTION
unsuccessful at the same. The
The beginning of the 21st century was
standards and the timeline for
the time when importance for
implementation are set by the Central
Environmental awareness was
Pollution Control Board under the
instigated. One of the major concerns
Ministry
regarding the environment is air
of Environment & Forests. Bharat
pollution. Air pollution contributes to
stage emission standards are emission
the green houses gases, which causes
standards instituted by the
the green house effect, whose side
Government of India to regulate the
effects are now well known to all of
output of air pollutants from internal
us after the findings about the hole in
combustion engine equipment,
the ozone layer. Air pollution is not
including motor vehicles. The first
only harmful to the environment but,
emission norms were introduced in
India in government. When the pollutant level
1991 for petrol and 1992 for diesel exceeds the standardized limit, it
vehicles. These were followed by sends a signal to the fuel injector. On
making the Catalytic converter receiving a signal from the controller,
mandatory for petrol vehicles and the the fuel injector stops the fuel supply
introduction of unleaded petrol in to the engine after a particular period
the market. On April 29, 1999 the of time.
Supreme Court of India ruled that all
vehicles in India have to meet Euro I
or India 2000 norms by June 1, 1999
and Euro II will be mandatory in the
NCR by April 2000. Car makers were
not prepared for this transition and in
a subsequent judgment the
implementation date for Euro II was
not enforced. The standards, based on
European regulations were first
introduced in 2000. Progressively
stringent norms have been rolled out
since then. All new vehicles
manufactured after the
implementation of the norms have to
be compliant with the regulations.
Since October 2010, Bharat stage III
norms have been enforced across the
country. In 13 major cities, Bharat
stage IV emission norms are in place
since April 2010.
The phasing out of 2 stroke engine for
two wheelers, the stoppage of
production of various old model cars
&introduction of electronic controls
have been due to the regulations
related to vehicular emissions. The
standardized values for the emission
levels are referred as given in [1]. The
sensing of the emitted gases are done
using various sensors and devices.
The past decade, has seen several
research activities that have been
taking place to develop
semiconductor gas
sensors [2]. In the paper [3], the
quality of air in the car cabin was
analyzed using semiconductor (MOS)
gas sensors. In this paper, the
semiconductor sensors have been
used to detect the pollutant level of
the vehicles. This paper concentrates A.Detector
mainly on three blocks; smoke The detector consists of three sub-blocks namely
detector, microcontroller and fuel smoke sensor, transducer and ADC. The smoke
injector. The smoke detector detects sensor is the main component of the detector block
the pollutants (CO, NOx, etc.) which is embedded onto the exhaust of the vehicle.
continuously. The microcontroller The sensor senses the amount of emission from the
compares the level of pollutants with vehicle and feeds the data to the microcontroller
the stipulated level allowed by the through the transducer and the analog to digital
converter at regular intervals of time. The original position, that is the fuel cut off switch, is
transducer is used to convert the output of the on. Then the fuel supply from the pump will be
sensor into an electrical signal. The analog stopped.
electrical signal is then converted into a digital
signal using an ADC, so that, it can be compared
with the predefined values, in the microcontroller.
In this paper, carbon monoxide sensor (MQ-7)
which can measure CO concentrations ranging
from 10 to 10,000 ppm is considered. This sensor,
basically finds usage in sensing carbon monoxide
concentrations (ppm), in the exhaust of cars as
shown in figure.3.3 and gives an analog output.
The MQ-7 gas sensor is mainly made up of
SnO2, whose conductivity varies with the
cleanliness of air i.e. it has a lower conductivity in
clean air and viceversa. A simple circuit as shown
in figure.3.2, is used to map the changes in
conductivity to the corresponding output signal of
the gas concentration. The main advantage of the
MQ-7 gas sensor is that it has high sensitivity to
Carbon Monoxide. Additionally, it has a very long
life time and is available at a low cost. Also it can D.Global Positioning System
be used for a wide range of applications. (GPS)
When the pollution level reaches
B.Microcontroller
the maximum limit, a trigger
In this paper, ATMEL 89S52 is used, which is an
pulse is given to GPS by the
8bit micro controller. It consists of three inbuilt
microcontroller. The GPS is
timer/counter which will be used for the timer
programmed in such a way that,
configuration. The microcontroller is programmed
when it receives a trigger pulse, it
to do three functions namely comparison, timer and
shows the nearest service stations
triggering circuit.
where the vehicle can be taken
The microcontroller takes in two inputs; one from
for maintenance.
the smoke sensor’s output and another being the
III. CONCLUSION
pre-defined threshold value specified by the
This whole paper mainly focuses on
government. When the smoke sensor output is
two things. The First thing is the
more than the threshold value, the microcontroller
concept of detecting the level of
triggers the timer circuit and an alarm [5] is set off
Pollution and indicating it to the
to inform the driver of the vehicle, about the same
driver. There is an increase in the
and also indicate that the vehicle will come to a halt
level of Pollution over the last couple
as soon as the timer runs out. Apart from the timer
of decades, leading to several
being triggered, a trigger is also given to the GPS,
Environmental problems. There will
which helps in locating the nearest service station.
be a huge population, who do not take
Once the timer runs out, a trigger pulse is generated
the pollution from their vehicles
by the microcontroller which is fed to the fuel
seriously, which has already
injector, which in turn stops the flow of fuel to the
resulted in several environmental
engine, as a result of which, the vehicle comes to
problems such Ozone layer depletion
halt.
and so on. So, this system will be
C.Fuel Injector highly beneficial is curbing this
The main function of the fuel injector is to cut the problem. The second reason is that
supply of fuel to the engine, when the pollution this system will be one of the greatest
limit is breached. The relay circuit shown in the improvements in technology to keep
figure.3.4 is used to control the on and off position the Environment free from vehicular
of the fuel pump[4]. In this paper, the engine emission and bring it to a halt if the
control unit is programmed in such a way that, Pollution level is more than the
when the microcontroller sends a trigger pulse after Standards mentioned by the
the timer runs out, relay should get back to its Government. The fact that this system
is just an add-on, as it does not easier to employ this system in the
change the configuration of the existing vehicles. The same concept
engine by any means, will make it can also be extended to industries.