An Automated Natural Gas Shut-Off Valve System

There is no system on the market today that monitors a building or house for natural gas and temperature levels simultaneously and shuts off the gas supply to prevent explosions.This has resulted in numerous explosions as reported in the media.This motivated the development of a cost-effective Automated Natural Gas Shut-off Valve system in a group project in the course of the junior-level Electromechanical Design at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Spring 2009.The objective was to turn off a valve at the beginning of the supply chain, outside the building which in turn would stop gas flow whenever elevated temperatures or elevated levels of natural gas were detected.The system consists of natural gas and temperature sensors placed in different rooms of the building.The sensors are interfaced with a microcontroller, which controls a solenoid valve outside the building.When natural gas is detected above a set gas threshold, or temperature above a set temperature threshold, the microcontroller actuates the solenoid and turns off the gas supply, thus preventing potential explosions and fire.A fully functional scaled modeled was developed and will be demonstrated.