The amount of received sunlight and radiant energy could affect the energy consumption in heating, cooling and lighting systems. Utilization of natural daylight in architecture, in addition to fulfilling the inhabitants' mental and physical needs, could greatly reduce fossil fuel consumption. Although higher levels of daylight can be obtained by increasing light transmission, this increased transmission could negatively affect the building's sustainability and thus result in higher energy consumption in turn. So, designers must seek an acceptable balance, in which not only optimal daylight comfort and usage are met but also the best possible thermal performance is achieved. The use of a parametric design model can facilitate the simulation of lighting and annual thermal performance of a building in the early stages of the design or restoration process. In this paper, the daylight and thermal performances of an office building are optimized using a simulated parametric-based design model and the Octopus plug-in which is an optimizing tool based on genetic algorithms developed for Grasshopper. By applying the developed workflow, the enhanced results for (useful daylight illuminance) is up by 20.56% and for energy use intensity by 141 kWh/m 2 /yr.

In recent years, as a novel mode of converting organic matter into bioelectricity, Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) have gained significant attention. Among effective parameters in MFCs, substrate type and concentration play major role on MFC performance. In this study, a dual chamber MFC was used with a wide range of fructose concentrations: 10, 20 30 and 40 g/l. The MFC was inoculated with Saccharomyces cerevisiae as biocatalyst. A100µm of neutral red as mediator and also 100µm ferricyanide as oxidizer added to anode and cathode chambers, respectively. The MFC generated an open circuit voltage (OCV) of 690, 768, 548 and 507 mV with concentration of fructose from 10 to 40 g.l-1 , respectively. Maximum power density of 32.16, 23.7, 18.9 and 10.47 were obtained with substrate concentration of 10 to 40 g.l-1 , respectively. The maximum value of OCV and power density obtained with 10g.l-1 of carbohydrate. To investigate resistance effect on MFC performance, for each substrate concentration data acquisition system was set at optimum value for the resistance which was resulted by the polarization curve. Then maximum power and optimum current density were recorded.

Microbial fuel cell, as a new technology for energy generation, has gained a lot of attention in converting a wide range of organic and inorganic substrates to bioelectricity in recent years. Substrate as the fuel of MFCs has an effective role on the performance of MFCs. To investigate the effect of type and concentration of substrate on the MFC performance, glucose and date syrup were examined over a concentration range of 2-20 g.l-1. Date syrup or any waste of date could be used as a natural substrate while glucose is considered as a synthetic carbon source. In this research a two-rectangular chambered MFC separated by a Nafion 112 proton exchange membrane, was constructed. The anodic compartment was inoculated by saccharomyces cerevisiae as biocatalyst. 200 µmol.l-1 of neutral red as the anodic mediator and 300 µmol.l-1 of potassium ferricyanide as oxidizer were added to anode and cathode chambers, respectively. The results has shown that 3 g.l-1 date syrupfed-MFC had the highest power density, 51.95 mW.m-2 (normalized to the geometric area of the anodic membrane, which was 9 cm 2), corresponding to a current density of 109.0384 mA.m-2 and a MFC voltage of 967 mV.

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