Waste-Biomass-Derived Carbon As Renewable Electrode Materials for Plant Microbial Fuel Cells

Developing clean and sustainable energy sources is important as it deals directly with energy shortage and environmental pollution problems caused by fossil fuels. Plant microbial fuel cells (PMFCs) is a novel technology that can convert solar energy into electrical energy by the microbes at the region of rhizosphere of the plants. Without producing any harmful byproducts during the energy generation process, PMFCs seems to be a promising choice as a renewable power supply technique. Green carbon materials, utilizing agro-industrial waste as precursors, has attracted lots of interest in research recently on account of them being environmental friendly materials and mitigating bio-wastes. To combine the advantages of PMFCs and green carbon materials, the aim of this study is to optimize the electrochemical performance of our designed PMFCs by utilizing biowaste-derived activated carbon materials as the electrode materials. The biowaste-derived activated carbon materials were characterized by Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area analyzer, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The electrochemical performance of PMFCs devices developed by ourselves were analyzed through linear sweep voltammetry (LSV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). This study set out to examine the relationship between the properties of activated carbon and the electrochemical performance of PMFCs, expecting to develop a high power density PMFCs device.