DOI: 10.14457/tu.the.2018.950
title: Determination of forage grass capability for electricity production in plant microbial fuel cell

description: Plant microbial fuel cell (PMFC) is a promising technology fascinating significant attention among researchers worldwide due to its sustainable and alternative approaches in bioelectricity generation. Because of the population explosion and the pressure on resource use, resources gradually be depleted, PMFC are viewed as a paramount and sustainable device for electricity production. The PMFC device serves a number of benefits, comprising of the wastewater treatment performance, the direct electricity production by utilizing a spontaneous combination of bio-electrochemical and physical processes. This thesis illustrates the discovery of forage grass capability for electricity generation under various operating conditions and evaluation of ambient parameters in PMFC. The outcomes interpret that PMFCs systems using Purple guinea grass are strongly influenced by configurations, water contents, defoliation, fertilizer and surrounding factors. In order to support the investigation, a series of experiments are performed in the following order: (i) Three PMFC systems using Purple guinea grass were installed including dry-soil, wet-soil, and waterlog PMFC under greenhouse condition. This experiment was carried out to determine the effects of soil water contents, temperature fluctuations, and circadian rhythm on current and power generations. Plants cultivation in waterlog condition were found to deliver better performance as compared to the others and the electricity of PMFCs increased for the high-temperature regime in the daytime. (ii) Purple guinea grass PMFC was grown in different configurations to maximize the effectiveness of PMFCs. In addition, a comparative analysis between defoliated plants and non-defoliated plants PMFCs on re-growth ability and re-bioelectricity generation was also carried out after completing configuration performance comparison. In this study, maximum power was examined through polarization curves and the output was calculated on the fundamental of the anodic area. Overall, the forage grass was able to perform in PMFC systems and might be an outstanding candidate for PMFC. It was observed that compared to single-chamber, double chamber equipped two cathodes, and air-cathode PMFC, the double chamber MFC is one of the most pertinent configurations for maximizing the efficiency of PMFC system using forage grass in terms of electricity production. Defoliation treatment carried out positive feedbacks, which generated a relative amount of electricity as non-defoliation and well fed for animals in long-term operation. In order to acquire tasty favor for feeding animals, it is considered to be harvested regularly and supported for both regrowth and electricity regeneration. On the other hand, PMFC systems in this study also were strongly affected by the variation of ambient factors. (iii) Considerations whether supplementing a huge amount of fertilizer for perennial purple guinea grass every year could be a right way for plant growth, electricity generation, and long-term soil properties operation, a comprehensive study with different fertilizer adjustments was determined. Four PMFCs including urea PMFC, a mixture of urea and compost PMFC, compost PMFC, and a control PMFC were instructed to examine the most suitable for the effectiveness of PMFC systems. The results showed that plants treated with only compost in PMFC obtained higher performance than others. The main reasons were attributed to changes in soil properties and bacteria activities in the systems. To sum up, this study suggests that PMFC systems can be built up by discovering the potential of perennial plants and elucidating basic factors are essential in order to clarify influences on performances of PMFC systems. Hence, a certain plant PMFC can be assigned and identified the fundamental principle that can be proposed for further studies.