Design and Development of an IoT-Based Gas Monitoring System for Underground Coal Mines

Abstract

Safety in underground coal mines is a major challenge whenever the mine comprises of toxic gases. The risk of the presence of gas influences the overall productivity of the mines, which is a subject of concern to the mining industry. Therefore, there is a need for real-time monitoring of underground mine environment, so that the miners can be safeguarded in case of presence of toxic gases. In this paper, an attempt was made to evolve and validate an Internet of Things (IoT)-based gas monitoring system for monitoring underground coal mines environment, which includes multiple sensors for real-time measurement of different gases. The developed IoT-based gas monitoring system was tested and validated in the laboratory, under the controlled environmental conditions, for the measurement of carbon dioxide (CO<inf>2</inf>), carbon monoxide (CO) and methane (CH<inf>4</inf>) gases. Further, the test results were compared with the readings obtained by the digital multi-gas detector, which confirmed that the developed real-time gas monitoring system yields a good result. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.