Study the performance of photogalvanic cells for solar energy conversion and storage: Toluidine blue–D‐Xylose–NaLS system

Toluidine blue has been used as the photosensitizer with D ‐Xylose as the reductant and s odium lauryl sulphate as the surfactant for the enhancement of the conversion efficiency and storage capacity along with reduction in cost of the photogalvanic cell for its commercial viability. The observed value of open circuit voltage is 1110.0 mV and the photogeneration of photopotential is 945.0 mV, whereas the maximum photocurrent is 510.0 µA and the short circuit current or photocurrent at equilibrium is 430.0 µA. The rate of initial generation of photocurrent is 56.66 µA min^?1. The determined maximum power and power at power point are 406.35 µW and 148.96 µW, respectively. The observed conversion efficiency is 1.4323%. The fill factor 0.3120 has been experimentally determined at the power point of the cell, where the absolute value is 1.0. The photogalvanic cell so developed can work for 130.0 min in dark if it is irradiated for 145.0 min, i.e. storage capacity of the photogalvanic cell is 89.65%. A mechanism has also been proposed for the photogeneration of the photocurrent. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.