Development of microcontroller based air quality monitoring system for data centre

Abstract

In developing countries, there is no greater attention to the value of air quality. Information Technology (IT) organizations are not even outside. People may be affected by various diseases for bad air quality. A data center is a facility used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. Not only humans, IT equipment can also be damaged due to bad air quality. It is very much important to monitor temperature, humidity, CO2 , CO, LPG, PM10, PM2.5 and other parameters of the air so that necessary steps can be taken in case of an emergency. The monitoring and recording should be automated, and available for a 24/7 operation to get the accurate status of the health of data centre. This project proposes to design a prototype of microcontroller based air quality monitoring system. The proposed system consists of an Atmega2560 microcontroller with Arduino board for performing all the controlling actions, a MQ-135 gas sensor for detecting CO2, a MQ-7 gas sensor for detecting CO, a MQ-5 gas sensor for detecting LPG leakage and a TFT LCD display device for displaying the state of the parameters. After reviewing literature on similar applications, the system has been implemented using on a test board. A number of experiments have been performed for testing the proper functionality of the air quality monitor. The test results show that the designed air quality monitor can display temperature, humidity, CO2, CO and LPG in the air which in turn ensures that the system is working properly and reliably. In future the proposed air quality monitor can be improved for commercial production.