CO2NET

A sensor network for detecting dangerous CO₂ emissions after carbon capture and storage

Contact	Dr. Marcus Venzke
Students	Anisa Rizvanolli Christin Pfeiffenberger Christian Rathjen Gabriel Augustin
Year	2009/2010
Context	Project/Seminar Realization of an I&K Application System (RIKA)

Background

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is the approach of capturing CO₂ produced by fossil fuel power plants and storing it permanently, e.g. in subterrestrial, geological formations. This may pose the risk of gas abruptly leaking back to earth's surface, for instance, due to an earthquake. Being heavier than air, CO₂ can concentrate in depressions blocking out oxygen, killing animals and humans. CO₂ leaks thus need to be detected quickly to warn humans in the area. A promising approach is the use of sensor networks with CO₂ sensors.

Project Goals

The goal of this project is to develop a sensor network detecting the abrupt increase of CO₂ in areas such as geographical depressions. To prevent false alarms, the network only raises an alert, if several sensor nodes detect the increase, because the increase at a single sensor may have natural reasons. Alerts are given as audio signal and by SMS. Aside from alerts the percentage of CO₂ and anomalies in concentration will monitored and graphically displayed at a central system.

The system is meant to be a demonstrator suitable for presentations to a broad audience demonstrating the applicability of sensor networks in this field that is important to the public (e.g. at TUHH open house, or "Nacht des Wissens"). This requires a pleasant monitor application to be shown on a beamer. Procedures are developed how to demonstrate the system.

The sensor network consists of IRIS sensor network nodes having CO₂ sensors connected to each node. The Software is based on the operating system TinyOS.