Journal
SENSORS
Volume 18, Issue 1, Pages -Publisher
MDPI AG
DOI: 10.3390/s18010071
Keywords
biosensor; green roof; microbial fuel cells; Sedum; soil water content
Funding
- FONDECYT under the Centro de Desarrollo Urbano Sustentable (CEDEUS) [1160917, CONICYT/FONDAP/15110020]
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Green roofs have many benefits, but in countries with semiarid climates the amount of water needed for irrigation is a limiting factor for their maintenance. The use of drought-tolerant plants such as Sedum species, reduces the water requirements in the dry season, but, even so, in semiarid environments these can reach up to 60 L m(-2) per day. Continuous substrate/soil water content monitoring would facilitate the efficient use of this critical resource. In this context, the use of plant microbial fuel cells (PMFCs) emerges as a suitable and more sustainable alternative for monitoring water content in green roofs in semiarid climates. In this study, bench and pilot-scale experiments using seven Sedum species showed a positive relationship between current generation and water content in the substrate. PMFC reactors with higher water content (around 27% vs. 17.5% v/v) showed larger power density (114.6 and 82.3 mu W m(-2) vs. 32.5 mu W m(-2)). Moreover, a correlation coefficient of 0.95 (+/- 0.01) between current density and water content was observed. The results of this research represent the first effort of using PMFCs as low-cost water content biosensors for green roofs.
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