Internet-based monitoring and warning system of methane gas generated in garbage center

This paper introduces a system which can monitor the environment of the garbage center in a city. Comparing with developed countries, they have technologies to process garbage, while those technologies are still difficult to be implemented in developing countries. In Indonesia, garbage are mostly placed in a wide-open area called landfill, where methane gas could be produced by a decomposition process. The gas has a characteristic that it can be burned easily. However, it is potentially to be used as an alternative energy for gas stoves. Considering this characteristic, the gas should be managed appropriately for both of distributing and monitoring gas leakage. Since the production of methane gas is plentiful enough, the gas can be distributed among the households surrounding the garbage center. Monitoring of methane gas has to be done continuously and real time during producing and distributing, without generating pollutions to the environment. Here, the monitoring system has been developed using a micro controller equipped with a methane gas sensor, i.e., TGS 2611. The data of monitoring will be distributed using an Internet-based system, where a Wi-Fi module is attached to the micro controller to send and communicate with the web-based server. Furthermore, information of monitoring the gas can be accessed by using android application. The advantage of the proposed system is that the user can monitor, record, and get the information of gas level. The system can also be used as an early-warning system when the gas exceeds the limit and when a danger situation occurs. The proposed system was tested using the black box method to evaluate the functionality. Finally, the system is used to optimize the Waste Management program through the utilization of methane gas. Hence, the utilization of methane gas monitoring system is tested to the user, whether they can use it easily.