A Comparative Study of Photo-sensitizers in Reductant Surfactant System in Photogalvanic cell for Photo induced Power Generation and Storage

Abstract

In the recent research we compared the solar energy performance of photogalvanic cell (PG cell) for two food dyes that act as photosensitizer tatrazine and sunset yellow in the DSS-EDTA (Dioctyl sodium sulphosuccinate - Ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid) system for power generation and its storage. Both are azo food dyes and act as photosensitizer, DSS acts as an anionic Surfactant and EDTA act as a reductant. The electrical parameters of both dye systems were studied and compared. The observed conversion efficiencies and fill factor for both systems in the DSS-EDTA system were 0.6163%, 0.2800, and 1.2186%, 0.2900, respectively. The stable photopotential (Voc) was 879 mV and 864.0 mV whereas the stable photocurrent (isc) was 220µA and 390 µA, respectively. In addition to having built-in storage capacity, the photogalvanic cell can operate in dark conditions. The amount of time required for the cell to reach half the value of power at power point, which was measure its performance called t1/2 of the cell. Cell performance of both PG cell was determined and for the Tartrazine - EDTA - DSS system it has been obtained 100 minutes while for the sunset yellow - EDTA - DSS system it was observed at 140 minutes. The current-voltage (i-v) characteristics of both the systems have been studied.