The aim of this project is to produce electricity from citronella biomass using isolated microbes from wastewater as biocatalyst in a dual chamber microbial fuel cell (MFC). MFC is one such system that not only reduced biomass, which contains mostly waste products but can also liberate electricity from them. MFC system is well-established and using lignocellulosic biomass as fuel is one step to future energy generation. Trials of MFC experiments have been conducted but using citronella bagasse (CB) as fuel source. Furthermore, pre-treatment of the biomass was done using NaOH pre-treament and effluent treatment wastewater from a palm edible oil company as a source for microorganism. The end results indicate that bioelectricity production from CB is possible though very low yield in the present MFC.
The efficacy of pandan leaf extract (PLE) addition on the oxidative degradation of sunflower oil (SFO) during microwave heating was studied. 80% of methanol extract showed better antioxidant action than the 100% methanol or ethanol extract and the total phenolic contents, DPPH radical scavenging activity and linoleic acid system of PLE were found to be 1845.50 mg GAE/100 g, 60.62-89.87% and 82.21%, respectively. 80% of methanolic extracts at different concentrations (0.1, 0.2 and 0.4 wt. %) were added to SFO. The antioxidant treated and control oil samples were subjected to microwave heating and were analyzed at regular intervals for the extent of oxidative changes following the measurements of peroxide value, p-anisidine value, TOTOX, free fatty acid, specific extinction, iodine value, viscosity, polar compounds and fatty acid composition. The PLE were found to be quite effective towards suppressing the primary and secondary oxidation products in the tested oil. The order of effectiveness (p<0.05) was BHA > 0.4% PLE > 0.2% PLE > 0.1% PLE > control. The present results suggested that antioxidant extract from pandan leaf might be used to protect vegetable oils from oxidation.
Anaerobic wastewater treatment technology has become one of the most popular technologies due to its economic and environmental benefits. Therefore, a reliable method to study the specific methanogenic activity (SMA) of anaerobic sludge is presented using SMA test. This test helps to determine suitable organic loading rate (OLR) to the anaerobic process. Meanwhile, SMA act as a benchmark to the anaerobic system performance where a slight change in SMA stipulate the accumulation of inhibitory substances from influent wastewater. One of the possible substances that inhibit the anaerobic digestion process is the presence of excessive light metal ions such as sodium (Na+) from the wastewater. The objective of this research was to investigate the specific methanogenic activity of anaerobic sludge in anaerobic filter and anaerobic digester as well as to compare and analyze anaerobic methanogenic bacteria under the effect of potentially inhibitory compound in both anaerobic digester and anaerobic filter. Two sources of inoculums (one from the anaerobic digester and one from the anaerobic filter) were adapted with sodium with varied range of concentrations which was 0 to 5 g Na + /l, before conducting SMA test by means of pressure differences. For the anaerobic digester, the SMA varied from 0.25 to 0.31 g COD/g VS.day meanwhile for the anaerobic filter, the SMA varied from 0.40 to 0.51 g COD/g VS.day. The result obtained confirmed that sludge from POME have better tolerance towards sodium than influents from petrochemical wastewater.