IIT Jodhpur Researcher Finds New Way to Generate Electricity From Plants; Details Here

A team of researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology, Jodhpur's Environmental biotechnology lab have found a new way to generate electricity from plants by using the wastewater in microbial fuel cells. 

The research team at IIT Jodhpur was led by the Associate Professor, Meenu Chhabra, from the department of bioscience and bioengineering, who have demonstrated for the first time that plant-based microbial fuel systems can generate more electricity efficiently from wastewater compared to the algae-based systems.

Wastewater treatment is an essential activity and the increase in the large amounts of domestic wastewater has necessitated the wastewater treatment and the development of newer treatment methods that are energy efficient and cost-effective. 

Dr. Chabbra gave a brief introduction about the Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) explaining that it is a device, which uses microbes to convert organic matter in wastewater directly into electrical energy.. 

As per the IIT Jodhpur statement, the idea of using microbes to produce electricity was a theory proposed in 1911 by Michael Potter, a Professor of botany at the University of Durham.

However, using plant-based microbial fuel to produce electricity is a recent discovery that provides solutions to the energy generation and the treatment of waste. 

It has been mentioned in the statement that plant-based systems are slower to build and have lower efficiencies than algae-based MFCs, which are more robust. 

Chhabra stated that her team have experimentally compared the performance of algae-based MCFs and plant-based MFCs under similar operational conditions and wastewater sources. 

Further, the researchers differentiated plant-based and algae-based MFCs in terms of pollutant removal efficiency and efficiency of electrical energy generation.

The team used Canna Indica for plant-based MFC, while Chlorella vulgaris was used for the algae-based MFC. As per the statement, the study was conducted under outdoor conditions using natural wastewater from the decentralized wastewater treatment plant of IIT Jodhpur. 

Dr. Chabbra concluded that Plant-based MFCs can be easily installed in natural wetland systems for in-situ bioremediation of waste and power generation. 

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