Published Paper Details:

Constructing an affordable cost, environment-friendly simplified electrical energy source with Patharkuchi Leaf (PKL) for power electrification will significantly upgrade the lifestyle of 1.6 billion people especially, those who live in rural areas of Bangladesh. However, one-fifth of the world's population still lacks access to electricity-well, mainly in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia (Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bhutan). This innovative technology will meet essential requirements such as lighting, telecommunication as well as information access. Electrodes are put into the Bryophyllum Pinnatum Leaf (BPL) or Patharkuchi Leaf (PKL) sap and they produce substantially sufficient amounts of electricity to power energy-consumed electronics and electrical appliances. CuSO4.5H2O solution is used as a secondary salt. The role of CuSO4.5H2O solution has been studied. The electrical and chemical properties, a very important factor for PKL electricity generation devices have been studied in this research work. The electrical properties are internal resistance, voltage regulation, energy efficiency, pulse performance, self-discharge characteristics, discharge characteristics with load, the capacity of the PKL cell, temperature characteristics, and the life cycle of the PKL cell. The chemical properties are variation of voltage, and current with the variation of [Zn2+], [Cu2+], and time. The performance of the production of the two bi-products (fertilizer and hydrogen gas production) has been studied. Variations of concentration of Zn2+ and Cu2+ with the variation of percentage of the secondary salt (CuSO4. 5H2O), percentage of the water, and the percentage of PKL sap have been studied. The change in PKL power efficiency with time has also been studied. Most of the results have been tabulated and graphically discussed. This study showed that internal resistance is nearly 0.60 ohm, voltage regulation is close to 9%, pulse performance is very good and energy efficiency is about 65%. Internal resistance is very much higher than the acceptable range. It is not needed to charge the PKL cell using external energy sources. Voltage and current reduce exponentially and the concentration of copper decreases gradually with time for PKL cells which also reflects the higher lifetime of the cell. Current is linearly proportional to voltage. The voltaic efficiency of the PKL cell is significant for the generation of electricity. Voltage and current linearly decrease with decreasing the concentration of copper. After extraction of electricity, the bi-product contains sufficient amounts of zinc waste which can be used as zinc fertilizer.