A Mobile Air-Purification Device and Digital Twin for Managing Hazardous Gases at Industrial Sites

The presence of hazardous gases in industrial sites where various substances are utilized poses safety concerns to workers. In particular, failure to promptly address hazardous situations can result in severe consequences such as significant casualties. Whereas many industrial sites have adopted air-purification systems to remove hazardous gases, most of those systems are fixed and focus on specific hazardous gases. Therefore, a safety system and response plan that can effectively manage the generation and dispersion of hazardous gases as well as for addressing unexpected situations must be established in industrial sites. This study proposes the development and application of a digital twin for the intelligent control mobile air-purification devices. The mobile air-purification device selects the appropriate removal module based on the type of hazardous gas and predicts the dispersion of gas through the digital twin. Based on the predicted results and derived purification priorities, the mobile air-purification device autonomously drives to the leakage point and removes the leaked hazardous gas. Hence, a digital twin is constructed and utilized to predict the concentration of hazardous gases in the field based on sensor data from the environment. Based on indoor experiments and simulations, we validate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology, which is expected to facilitate crisis response and improve worker safety in industrial settings.