Development of real time carbon emissions and energy monitoring system for industrial environment using OPC architecture

Abstract

Global warming is referred to the rise in average surface temperatures on earth primarily due to the Greenhouse Gases (GHG) emissions, such as Carbon Dioxide (CO2) which trapped the heat within the atmosphere that will affect the ecosystems. Monitoring the emissions, either direct emissions from industrial processes or indirect with electrical energy consumptions is important to control or to minimize their impact to the environment. Electricity generation is normally using the steam turbine that burning fossil fuel as the source of energy, thus releases CO2 in the process. Most of the existing environment monitoring system is being designed and developed for non-industrial environment monitoring. Hence, the aim of this project is to develop industrial CO2 emissions monitoring system that can monitor real-time emissions in the industrial plant as well as energy usage which can be translated to its CO2 equivalent. Developed using real-time development methodologies, the system implement Object Linking and Embedding for Process Control (OPC) communication protocol that widely used in process and control applications in the industry today. The protocol is successfully being interfaced to a low power Arduino microcontroller, hence it able to provide the sensor data to any of existing industrial OPC compliant Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system, for real-time emissions monitoring. The system has been successfully tested in Vehicle Engine Testing Lab in MJIIT, UTM which providing the suitable environment for real-time CO2 emissions measurement. The measurement data has been showed in an industrial SCADA application developed for the project. The system should benefits the industries in monitoring and managing their real-time carbon emissions which can be interfaced to their existing process monitoring system.