Disclaimer
This blog post is a student assignment for SMBB3113 Phycology. Information in this post is not medical or professional advices. The result found from this entrepreneurship project is based on the observation and hypothesis that have certain limitation. All the materials shared in this page including text, chat, video, picture is provided for informational and academic purposes only. Please note that these results may contain risk or inaccuracy.
About Us
Our Brand:
Humi-Vulgaris
Our Product:
Portable Eco-Friendly Humidifier
Tagline:
Say bye-bye to dry, dry air.
The Team:
- Siti Nur Haziqah binti Yahya Leader
- Muhammad Ajwad bin Mohd Salleh Production
- Nurul Ain binti Mazli Administration
- Natasya binti Azman Finance
- Nurul Nazihah binti Kasim Marketing
- Siti Nur Nasuha binti Wahid Quality Control
Mission
Vision
To be one of the leading air humidifier companies in the world, admired for its brands, innovation and results, contributing to a better and sustainable lifestyle.
Idea
To provide an eco-friendly humidifier that uses a sustainable electricity energy supplied by algae and at the same time cleanses the wastewater.
Opportunities
During hot weather in Malaysia, this humidifier will add moisture to the air to prevent irritation in many parts of the body such as skin, nose, throat, and lips. It may also ease the symptoms of flu and the common cold. Apart from that, this humidifier will reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
What is Bioelectricity?
Problem Statement
Although there exists a wireless air humidifier, it still requires the use of electricity to recharge once they run out of battery. Hence, it is still relying on the production of electricity through the combustion of fossil fuels by the electric power industry which is one of the main contributors to greenhouse gases such as CO2 (26.9% of US greenhouse gas emission in 2018).
How Does It Work?
This humidifier will use a sustainable electricity supply and also can clean the wastewater at the same time. The size of the humidifier that we use is a console humidifier that has tires to move around and they are large, they can take up to 4 liters of water and the type of humidifier that we use is an evaporator. Algae is a valuable species for the biological purification of wastewater. Algae remove nutrients, such as phosphorus, nitrogen, heavy metals, pesticides, organic and inorganic toxins, and also pathogens from the wastewater. Algae will accumulate and/or use them in their cells. Algae will undergo photosynthesis to generate electrons that will produce electricity to the system. This electricity will be used to operate the humidifier.
Method of Application
- Algal fuel cell (AFC) is a device that is able to produce electricity through the photosynthesis reaction of microalgae. Microalgae are known to be eco-friendly organisms with high photosynthetic efficiency and rapid reproduction.
- Algae convert carbon dioxide into oxygen as lights stimulate the CO2 fixation by the Calvin cycle. AFC has an anode and cathode compartments enclosed with a photosynthetic microorganism. Anolyte rich in carbon sources such as glucose formate and acetate being similar to other prepared sources like LB medium. Catholyte commonly used is microalgae (Blue-green algae, Chlorella Vulgaris).
- Electrode:
Anode: graphite plates and rods, carbon fiber brushes, carbon cloth, carbon paper, carbon felt, carbon nanotubes, and granulated graphite.
Cathode: graphite felt coated with platinum, 10% Teflon coated on carbon paper.
- The membrane acts as a separator for the anode and cathode compartments.
Cation exchange membranes such as sulfonated polyether ether ketone.
Anion exchange membranes such as salt bridges Influence of carbon dioxide: CO2 concentration affects the lipid content of microalgae.
- The cells produce polyunsaturated fatty acids under high CO2 concentrations. A 6% lipid content increase was observed accompanied by a 10–15% increase in CO2 supply.
- Influence of light source: the fluorescent light source was effective in the indoor cultivation of Chlorella Vulgaris.
Advantages
What’s interesting about our product? What made our product stand out more compared to the other products? Firstly, due to its sustainability, our product is very low in cost. This is because our product only uses natural solar energy from the sun. Secondly, our product is environmentally friendly since it reduces the emission of greenhouse gases such as CO2. This can be achieved during the Calvin cycle of photosynthesis that is carbon fixation.
In addition to that, our product will have higher efficiency. This is because algae are very known to have a higher rate of photosynthesis compared to plants. Lastly, our product will have resistance towards harmful materials. This is proven because algae are also known to have the ability to perform wastewater treatment.
Disadvantages
The disadvantages of this product are first, algae have low generation time per cell. This will produce insufficient electrons to be converted into electricity when they are flowing through the external circuit. Hence, a lot of algae is needed to produce enough electricity to make the product work.
Secondly, it has low stability of the system. Algae is a living organism and every organism will enter the death phase. Hence, the generation of the algae will be stopped when the algae enter the death phase and this will reduce the efficiency of the product.
Thirdly, there are limitations of the source and the intensity of light. Since algae is a photosynthetic organism, it needs sunlight to generate electrons through photosynthesis. This would be a problem if the humidifier is used during nighttime since photosynthesis is slowed down in absence of light.
Lastly, further research and studies need to be conducted on the factors of the generation time of the algae such as pH value, algal cell density and chlorophyll content, dissolved oxygen (DO) content, and temperature. These factors are hard to control and to be maintained since it will not achieve their stability by themselves.