Design of gas cylinder management system based on RFID

1. Overview of Gas Cylinder Management System Based on RFID Technology
The gas cylinder and retail safety management system adopts advanced RFID technology to achieve full-range management of the filling and circulation process of gas cylinders. On each steel cylinder belonging to the gas company, a special-shaped electronic tag with the lifelong identity of the gas cylinder is fixedly installed in a dedicated manner. The scope of this system not only includes the management of gas cylinders in and out of filling stations, gas exchange stations, and distribution links, but also controls the status and behavior of each process in the filling and testing process of gas cylinders, ensuring the safety of gas cylinder circulation, eliminating potential accidents, maintaining the personal and property safety of enterprise employees, and preventing illegal users from making illegal profits.

2. Objectives of Gas Cylinder Management System Based on RFID Technology

There may be various hidden dangers in the production and sales process of gas cylinders, which are mainly manifested in the business related to liquefied gas filling stations, gas cylinder maintenance companies and gas delivery stations. RFID can improve the relevant business processes of these three places. The detailed goals are as follows:

2.1 Liquefied gas filling station

The production process of a filling station includes bottle collection, inspection, cleaning, weighing, bottle cleaning, filling, testing, sealing and shipping. At present, all production links are manually inspected and tested, which has problems of low efficiency and hidden dangers of errors. Through RFID automatic identification technology, the identity of gas cylinders can be quickly and accurately identified, which improves production efficiency and prevents the flow of gas cylinders to be inspected into the production process, causing quality risks.

2.2 Gas Cylinder Repair Company

The production process of a gas cylinder maintenance company includes collecting, inspecting, calcining, sanding, painting, testing and shipping. RFID technology can identify and record key process points, and ultimately achieve tracking management of individual gas cylinders through a database.

2.3 Gas supply station

The production process of the gas delivery station includes collecting bottles, changing gas, and delivering bottles to customers. The application of RFID in the gas delivery station is used to register the gas cylinders entering and leaving the gas delivery station to prevent other gas cylinders from entering the enterprise through the gas delivery station channel.

3. Structure and authority of gas cylinder management system based on RFID technology

3.1 Gas Cylinder Labeling and Management

The unique corresponding electronic tag for the identification of industrial gas cylinders is a set of data information closely related to the gas cylinder. The tag can be installed flexibly so that it can be removed and reinstalled during inspection. The data in the tag is stored through encryption, so the reinstalled tag can be guaranteed to be the system tag. The relevant operators of the enterprise can file, edit and maintain the information through the system software. All operators and managers involved in the filling and circulation of gas cylinders can query part or all of the information through the tag reading and writing equipment or management software according to their authority.

3.2 User identification and management

All users in the system are issued with user cards with readable and writable electronic tags as the basis for identification and transactions. All users who want to conduct transactions must first go to the enterprise to go through the relevant procedures, receive the card and recharge it. The delivery personnel deliver the gas to the door, confirm the user card and deduct the corresponding amount through the label handheld reading and writing device, and correspond the bottle number to it; or at the industrial gas station, the user uses the card to collect and return the gas cylinder, and the reading and writing device automatically determines whether the user card is legal and whether the number of gas cylinders that can be collected on the card meets the requirements. When the conditions are met, the device automatically modifies the relevant information in the card, and the transaction data is immediately reported to the central management system.

3.3 Identification and management of operating personnel

The operators involved in the system operation can be divided into the following categories:
(1) Industrial gas station receiving and dispatching management personnel
(2) Filling station entry management personnel
(3) Gas cylinder inspection personnel
(4) Gas cylinder filling personnel
(5) Gas cylinder in and out of the warehouse management personnel
(6) Equipment inspection personnel
(7) System information management personnel
(8) Decision-making or enterprise management personnel
(9) System management and maintenance personnel

For personnel in categories (1) to (6), the system issues a unique user card to each employee. When they perform operations, the system automatically determines their legitimacy and authority and controls their operations. After each operation is completed, the read-write device reports the identity code and operation information to the central management system. This allows all personnel's operations to be tracked and checked in real time. For users in categories (7) to (9), the system directly verifies their identities and authorities through user names and passwords.

RFID gas cylinder management system diagram

4. Gas Cylinder Management System Process Based on RFID Technology

4.1 Production process of filling station based on RFID:

The implementation of RFID automatic identification technology will enable the filling station to establish visibility and information tracking of the gas cylinder in all links of the production process from the first moment it receives the gas cylinder.
When the gas cylinder is unloaded from the transport vehicle, the RFID reader placed in the channel will automatically identify the tag information on the gas cylinder and determine: 1) whether there is a tag in conjunction with the control device 2) whether the gas cylinder has reached the maintenance period? The gas cylinder that needs to be repaired will automatically enter the waiting area for repair. This link will ensure that only the gas cylinders that meet the quality requirements of the company can enter the normal production process. The use of RFID will greatly improve the production efficiency of the gas cylinder inspection process and can also perform accurate counting.
Before entering the filling workshop, the gas cylinder tag is read again through the channel reading device to confirm that the gas cylinder received this time has not been missed in the previous pre-filling process.
If necessary, RFID can be implemented at each station in the filling workshop to rewrite the information of the gas cylinder tag and write the information of the production inspector into the tag.
Use RFID reading devices at the exit of the filling workshop to ensure that the gas cylinders entering the workshop are filled within a certain time limit.
When the gas cylinders are loaded onto the truck, they pass through the last RFID reading gate, and the loading details of the gas cylinders will be automatically recorded.

4.2. Production process of maintenance station based on RFID:

Since RFID tags cannot withstand the high temperatures of the calciner, we use the method of separating the tag from the bottle body. The tracking of gas cylinders at this stage relies on the combination of cylinder steel stamps, RFID tags and databases.

When the gas cylinder enters the maintenance station, the data of the gas cylinder with RFID tag is automatically identified by the RFID reading equipment, and the data of the gas cylinder without tag is recorded by its stamp number; if the equipment recognizes that the gas cylinder has exceeded its service life, the system will automatically alarm.

Gas cylinders that are still within their service life enter the maintenance process, and the sealing valve is removed. At the same time, the RFID tag installed under the valve is also removed and waits for the data information to be rewritten. At this point, the RFID tag is separated from the gas cylinder.

The rest of the process for cylinder inspection remains unchanged.

When the gas cylinder enters the valve sealing process, the process staff obtains the cylinder record from the database through the steel stamp on the cylinder, and writes the cylinder information into the RFID Tag through the RFID reader.

Since the tags can be rewritten, all tags can be used. When the gas cylinder leaves the factory after inspection, it still carries the tag representing the information of the gas cylinder.

Gas delivery station process:

After using RFID technology, the gas delivery station will establish a connection with the local database through the RFID device.

When a self-collected customer changes a gas cylinder, the cylinder label is read to identify whether the empty cylinder is a company asset, and only eligible cylinders can be replaced.