With the advantages of clean, efficient and energy-saving, microbial fuel cells (MFCs) were characterized with perfect significance in the field of degrading environmental pollutants and generating electricity meanwhile. The cathode materials affected the activity of oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), and affected the power generation performance for MFCs. There were many kinds of nano materials played an important role in the field of cathode catalysis. The advantages of metal and non-metal composites were easy to obtain and low cost; layered double hydroxide (LDH) was easy to control and compound, and could be fully realized functionalization; metal organic frameworks (MOFs) were widely used since their porosity, high specific surface area and high activity; covalent organic frameworks (COFs) were low density and easy to be modified, so as to modify and realize functionalization; MXene was an excellent two-dimensional material, which could provide more channels for the movement of ions. The nano materials formed by the composite of various materials combined the advantages of various materials and played key role in improving ORR performance of MFCs.

The main target of this research is to allow solar PV to contribute economically on an on-grid energy-efficient building where the dust accumulation is a significant factor. Self-cleaning coatings such as hydrophobic or hydrophilic materials have recently been introduced to reduce dust deposition on building-integrated PV (BIPV) panels. The hydrophilic Nano-coated material is examined as a solution to decrease the impact of the dust on the BIPV panels and harvest more solar energy. An impartial comparison of the BIPV panels performance under natural dust conditions, manual cleaning, and hydrophilic nanomaterial coating is performed. Through an exhaustive and qualitative experimental analysis, the anti-reflection and anti-static properties of the utilized Nano-coated material are examined. The experimental results show that the hydrophilic Nano-coated material significantly improves the gathered maximum output power by 18% compared to the manually wiped panel. The calculated efficiencies of the Nano-coated, manual cleaning, and dusty panels are 11%, 9%, and 6%, respectively, which highlights the futureproofing of the Nano-coated solar panel. Compared to the dusty panels, the ecological and economical results show that the BIPV carbon emissions are desirably dropped by 11% while using Nano-coated PV panels and the payback period is reduced to 3.9 years, which is approximately 12.8% faster.

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Jenny
Journal Co-ordinator
Journal of Nano Research & Applications