| dc.description.abstract | In Uganda, Liquefied Petroleum gas (LPG) commonly known as cooking gas is a common cooking fuel and according to a study conducted by the Uganda LP Gas Association in 2019 about 0.5% of the households in Uganda use LP gas and the number was expected to continually grow exponentially to about 20% in 2020. However, household users of LPG are faced with the problems of failure in predicting when the gas shall get depleted, how long the gas shall last, when next they shall have to stock. This is because of the users’ inability to reliably monitor their gas usage and accurately measure the amount of LPG left in their manufacturer-issued cannisters.
The existing means of measuring/telling the quantity of gas left in the gas cylinders are unreliable and initiatives by private companies to aid users in telling the amount of gas in the cannisters are expensive and not easy to operate. This therefore breeds problems related to barriers to planning usage of LPG in heating, and lighting applications and hinders effective budgeting in households in relation to when next a gas refill shall be due.
To efficiently solve this problem, the author proposed the design of a cost-efficient gas level indicator that employs the use of a mechanical system to translate the change in weight of the gas cannister into an intuitive visual rise or fall in level in a transparent liquid tube. Several design procedures to attain this efficient system were followed as clearly articulated in the subsequent chapters of this document.
Upon completion of the construction process of the gas level indicator system, the author conducted a series of rigorous tests, these tests yielded the following results; a) the mechanical system has an average efficiency of 78.9%, which is an acceptable efficiency margin as it shows that the system is accurate with large quantities of gas, b) being a mechanical system, it responds swiftly to inputs in terms of changes in weight, with an average response time of about 10 milliseconds, c) the system’s prototype proved to be expensive as its cost peaked to nearly 2 million Ugandan Shillings, however, the author believes that the cost shall exponentially decay in mass production, as the economies of scale go a long way to reduce the costs of production, d) the system requires that the user calibrates it each time they place a newly refilled cylinder on the top, e) The system is constrained by the inability to see the actual liquid gas level within the cylinder, therefore, it cannot be used to tell the gas level for a cylinder that isn’t newly filled such as an already used gas cannister. | en_US |
