Air Quality Monitoring System

Abstract
This paper deals with measuring Air Quality using MQ135 sensor along with Carbon Monoxide
CO using MQ7 sensor. Measuring Air Quality is an important element for bringing lot of
awareness in the people to take care of the future generations a healthier life. Based on this,
Government of India has already taken certain measures to ban ‘Single Stroke’ and ‘Two Stroke’
Engine based motorcycles which are emitting high pollutions comparatively. We are trying to
implement the same system using IoT platforms like Thingspeak or Cayenne, we can bring
awareness to every individual about the harm we are doing to our environment. Already, New
Delhi is remarked as the most pollution city in the world recording Air Quality above 300PPM.
We have corrected the other papers where they have wrongly calibrated the sensor and wrongly
projecting the PPM values. We have also used easiest platform like Thingspeak and set the
dashboard to public such that everyone can come to know the Air Quality at the location where
the system is installed. Also, we have reduced the cost of components used on comparing with the
papers referred.
Keywords: IoT, MQ135, MQ7, Thingspeak

INTRODUCTION

Air is getting polluted because of release of toxic gases by industries, vehicle emissions and increased
concentration of harmful gases and particulate matter in the atmosphere. The level of pollution is
increasing rapidly due to factors like industries, urbanization, increasing in population, vehicle use which
can affect human health. Particulate matter is one of the most important parameter having the significant
contribution to the increase in air pollution [2]. This creates a need for measurement and analysis of real-
time air quality monitoring so that appropriate decisions can be taken in a timely period. This paper
presents a real-time standalone air quality monitoring. Internet of Things is nowadays finding profound
use in each and every sector, plays a key role in our air

quality monitoring system too. The setup will show the air quality in PPM in webpage so that we can
monitor it very easily. In this IoT project, you can monitor the pollution level from anywhere using your
computer or mobile [1]. The setup will show the air quality in PPM in webpage so that we can monitor it
very easily. In this IoT project, you can monitor the pollution level from anywhere using your computer
or mobile. Air condition is much polluted. In recent years, car emissions, chemicals from factories, smoke
and dust are everywhere. That is the reason why now air condition is much polluted. The effect of air
pollution is very bad for our health, especially for place where the air in our body is taken for breathing.
In our lungs may cause some diseases, such as asthma, cough, lung disorders [1].The air pollution cannot
be detected by human feelings. The air pollution may contain a lot of dangerous substances, such as LPG
gas, carbon monoxide, and methane [2]. Substances in the polluted air are very dangerous. For example,
if the carbon monoxide is above 100ppm, it makes human feel dizzy, nauseous, and within minutes they
could die.This research makes human find out which content of the air is polluted. With module node
mcu esp8266, we can monitor the air pollution remotely, because there is a Wi-Fi in nodemcu esp8266.
This makes the air condition can be monitored every time.

LITERATURE REVIEW
1. IOT Based Air Pollution Monitoring System Using Node MCU

Arduino Poonam Pal1, Ritik Gupta2, Sanjana Tiwari3, Ashutosh Sharma4

The level of pollution has increased with times by lot of factors like the increase in population, increased
 vehicle use, industrialization and urbanization which results in harmful effects on human wellbeing by
directly affecting health of population exposed to it. In order to monitor In this project we are going to
make an IOT Based Air Pollution Monitoring System in which we will monitor the Air Quality over a
web server using internet and will trigger a alarm when the air quality goes down beyond a certain level,
means when there are sufficient amount of harmful gases are present in the air like CO2, smoke, alcohol,
benzene and NH3. It will show the air quality in PPM on the LCD and as well as on webpage so that we
can monitor it very easily. In this IOT project, you can monitor the pollution level from anywhere using
your computer or mobile.

2. IOT Based Air Pollution Monitoring System

Harsh N. Shah 1 , Zishan Khan 2 , Abbas Ali Merchant 3 , Moin Moghal 4 , Aamir Shaikh 5 , Priti Rane
6 1, 2, 3, 4,5Student, Diploma in Computer Engineering, BGIT, Mumbai Central, India 6Assistant
Professor, BGIT, Mumbai Central, India
Air pollution is the biggest problem of every nation, whether it is developed or developing. Health
problems have been growing at faster rate especially in urban areas of developing countries where
industrialization and growing number of vehicles leads to release of lot of gaseous pollutants. Harmful
effects of pollution include mild allergic reactions such as irritation of the throat, eyes and nose as well as
some serious problems like bronchitis, heart diseases, pneumonia, lung and aggravated asthma.
According to survey, due to air pollution 50,000 to 100,000 premature deaths per year occur in the
U. S. alone. Whereas in EU number reaches to 300,000 and over 3,000,000 worldwide. IOT Based Air
Pollution Monitoring System monitors the Air quality over a web server using Internet and will trigger an
alarm when the air quality goes down beyond a certain threshold level, means when there are sufficient
amount of harmful gases present in the air like CO2, smoke, alcohol, benzene, NH3, LPG and NOx. It
will show the air quality in PPM on the LCD and as well as on webpage so that it can monitor it very
easily.

3. ality MIOT Based Air Quonitoring System

Ch.V.Saikumar[1] M.Reji[2] P.C.Kishoreraja[3] Department of ECE ,Saveetha School of Engineering

Saveetha University, Chennai, India
The main objective of this project is to monitor the air eminence in industrial and urban areas. The
proposed outline includes a set of gas sensors (CO, and NO2) that are positioned on masses and structure
of a IOT (Internet of things) and a dominant server to support both short-range realtime incident
management and a continuing deliberate planning. In this Arduino platform is used to communicate the
data simply and quickly. WSN (Wireless sensor network) acts as the trans receiver. This provide a real-
time low rate monitoring system over the use of low rate, low information rate, and little control wireless
communication technology. The projected monitoring system can be transferred to or shared by different
applications. Through IOT we can able to visualize the values from the globe.

The problem in this paper is they haven’t calibrated the sensor and not even converted the sensor output
value into PPM. As per the guidelines by UN Data, 0-50 is SAFE value and 51-100 is moderate. Delhi is
the most polluted city in the world recorded 350PPM. While using two sensors, as both sensors have
internal heat element, it draws more power(P= VxI), so though the both sensors are turned ON, its output
voltage levels varies and shows unpredicted values due to insufficient drive. So we used a 9V battery and
a 7805 family REGULATOR for the CO sensor MQ7. For MQ135 we have given the power from
Arduino only.

(4) Arduino Based Weather Monitoring System

Karthik Krishnamurthi, Suraj Thapa, Lokesh Kothari, Arun Prakash Department of Computer Science,
 Christ University, Bangalore, India
This Paper makes use of 3 sensors to measure the weather/environment factors such as temperature,
humidity, light intensity, dew point and heat index. The values read from the sensors are processed by the
Arduino micro-controller and stored in a text file which can be processed upon to derive analysis. The
readings are also displayed on an on board LCD for quick viewing. All these readings can be analyzed to
get the weather characteristics of a particular area and record the weather pattern. These recorded
parameters are essential and vary from places to places.

(5) IoT Based Air Pollution Monitoring System

Riteeka Nayak1 , Malaya Ranjan Panigrahy 2 , Vivek Kumar Rai3 , T Appa Rao4
The level of pollution has increased with times by lot of factors like the increase in population, increased
vehicle use, industrialization and urbanization which results in harmful effects on human wellbeing by
directly affecting health of population exposed to it. In order to monitor In this project we are going to
make an IOT Based Air Pollution Monitoring System in which we will monitor the Air Quality over a
web server using internet and will trigger a alarm when the air quality goes down beyond a certain level,
means when there are sufficient amount of harmful gases are present in the air like CO2, smoke, alcohol,
benzene and NH3. It will show the air quality in PPM on the LCD and as well as on webpage so that we
can monitor it very easily. we have used MQ135 sensor which is the best choice for monitoring Air
Quality as it can detects most harmful gases and can measure their amount accurately. In this IOT
project, you can monitor the pollution level from anywhere using your computer or mobile.
This paper assumed completely wrong assumption where they have showed the output 997PPM as the
fresh air, where Delhi which is the most polluted city recording 350PPM. Its clear understanding that they
haven’t calibrated the sensor and didn’t even convert the raw sensor data into PPM using derivations we
did. They have used LocalHost which is limited where they are able to see the output only on the laptop
within the experimental setup connected. But we have used premium iot platforms which are highly
secured and open source IoT platform.

PROPOSED METHODOLOGY

We used Thingspeak IoT platform and we clearly defined the derivations that mentions the correct ppm
on the screen with correct calibration. We have implemented it with less cost i.e., when we are pushing
the data to the cloud, no need to see the output on LCD which adds more cost to the project [1]. When we
are targeting IoT as a platform, our intension should be to present the idea on internet using the platforms
like thinger.io or thingspeak or Cayenne website which are beautifully designed to present the output and
even able to download the dataset. When doing an experiment air quality monitoring, no need to use LPG
or methane detecting sensors as it is used for Home/office safety. We have used WiFi to push the data
onto the cloud rather using GSM or GPRS module [2]. The problem in another paper that cited at [3]
hasn’t calibrated the sensor and not even converted the sensor output value into PPM. As per the
guidelines by UN Data, 0-50 PPM is SAFE value, 51-100 is moderate as shown in figure 1. Delhi is the
most polluted city in the world recorded around 250PPM. As we are using two sensors, both of them have
internal heat element, it draws more power(P= V*I), so though the both sensors are turned ON, its output
voltage levels varies and shows unpredictable values due to insufficient power drive. So we used a 9V
battery and a 7805 family LM7805 Regulator for the CO sensor MQ7.
We have used Arduino Uno Development kit that comes with ATMega328P microcontroller. In order to provide WiFi
Support for it, we have used cost effective

We have used Arduino Uno Development kit that comes with ATMega328P microcontroller. In order to provide WiFi
Support for it, we have used cost effective
 DIAGRAM MADE THROUGH FRITZIG

The most important step is to calibrate the sensor in fresh air and then draw an equation that converts the
sensor output voltage value into our convenient units PPM (parts per million). Here are the mathematical
calculations derived [6]. Fig 5: Internal circuit diagram of MQ135 sensor RS and RL combined From
Ohm’s Law, at constant temperature, we can derive I as follows:

I = V/ R (1)
From fig , equation 1 is equivalent to
I = Vc / Rs + Rl (2)
From , we can obtain the output voltage at the load resistor using the value obtained for I and Ohm’s Law at constant
temperature. V = I*R
VRl = [ Vc/ Rs + Rl ] ∗ RL (3)
VRl = [ Vc ∗ Rl [Rs + Rl ] (4) (VRl ∗ Rs) + (VRl ∗ Rl) = Vc ∗ RL (5) VRl ∗ Rs = (Vc ∗ Rl) − (VRl ∗ Rl)
(6)

Rs = (Vc ∗ Rl) − (VRl ∗ Rl) VRl (7) Rs = (Vc ∗ Rl)

VRl – Rl (8)

fresh air Rs = (Vc ∗

Equation 9 help us to find the internal sensor resistance for
Rl)/ VRl – Rl
 Equation 10 is depicted from the datasheet mentioned in Fig 6. To calculate R0, we will need to find the
value of the Rs in fresh air. This will be done by taking the analog average readings from the sensor and
converting it to voltage. Then we will use the Rs formula to find R0. First of all, we will treat the lines as
if they were linear. This way we can use one formula that linearly relates the ratio and the concentration.
By doing so, we can find the concentration of a gas at any ratio value even outside of the graph’s
boundaries. The formula we will be using is the equation for a line, but for a log-log scale. The formula
for a line is [9]: From above Figure 3, we try to derive the following calculations.
y = mx + b (11)
For a log-log scale, the formula looks like this: log10y = m ∗
log10x + b
Now that we have m, we can calculate the y intercept. To do so, we need to choose one point from the
graph (once again from the CO2 line). In our case, we chose (5000,0.9)
log(y) = m ∗ log(x) + b (17)
b = log(0.9) − (−0.318) ∗ log(5000) (18) b = 1.13 (19)
Now that we have m and b, we can find the gas concentration for any ratio with the following formula:
log(x) = log(y) − b m (20)

However, in order to get the real value of the gas concentration according to the log- log plot we need to find the
inverse log of x: x = 10 / m
Using equations 9 and 21, we will be able to convert the sensor output values into PPM (Parts per Million). Now we
developed the Code and flashed into the Arduino Uno giving proper connections as mentioned

RESULTS
After connecting the wifi successfully to the ESP-01, it gets established with Thingspeak account with the help of the
API key of our account provided. Thingspeak needs 15 seconds of refresh interval to push to the data. Fig 7 shows the
field charts of MQ135 and MQ7 sensor values which made to convert to PPM [7] [8]. Fig 8 showing the graphical
analysis of the values collected
with time on X axis and
AirQuality PPM on Y axis.

CONCLUSION
Air quality monitoring systems are designed using different sensors for indoor and outdoor air quality
monitoring in the previous works by using Bluetooth, GPS, GPRS wireless technologies. In a previous
work WASP module is used which is costly. Instead of that different sensors can be used. The proposed
system is developed for indoor air quality monitoring remotely. It is cost and energy efficient request and
respond protocol is used along with combination of address and data centric protocols. Paper presents the
summary of various techniques of air quality monitoring. These techniques are elaborately discussed in the
paper. In the proposed system, one of the most preferred technique is cloud based air quality monitoring
system. Using the same cloud data, website is hosted and data is displayed on the website.

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