Fruit Solar Panels
Students of Rowan University (Glassboro, New Jersey), working under the guidance of Professor Darius Kuciauskas, use pigments of blueberries, blueberries, oranges and grapefruits to create solar panels.
Modern commercially available solar panels are efficient, but their production and maintenance is labor-intensive and requires large financial costs. Fragile "first generation" batteries, which are often installed on the roofs of "ecological" houses, are based on crystalline silicon used to make computer chips. Solar panels of the "second generation" also work on crystalline semiconductors, but thin films of expensive material are used in their manufacture.
Currently, experts are working on the creation of efficient and, more importantly, inexpensive "third generation" solar panels that function on the principle of photosynthetic systems. There are several approaches to the creation of such batteries, one of which – the use of plant pigments – the authors put as the basis of their project.
Scientists have developed a new process for extracting pigments from various fruits and creating a kind of pigment "cocktail". They use filters to remove large particles of homogenized fruit mass, which is subjected to lyophilization (freezing in vacuum, providing complete dehydration).
The resulting material, consisting of carbohydrates and pigments, is divided into components and an acidic solution is obtained, brightly colored with the dyes contained in it.
The resulting mixture of pigments is applied to a conductive glass coated with a porous film of pigment–binding titanium dioxide, a compound found in almost all materials around us, from toothpaste and white paint to sandwich buns. The final step is the addition of iodine and potassium iodide, which ensure the restoration of the pigment.
The light falling on the pigments excites electrons, which move to an electrode made of conductive glass and form an electric current.
The performance of such organic solar cells is lower than that of traditional devices based on crystalline silicon, but the cost of the energy produced is much lower. Similar devices have been created before, but the process of extracting plant pigments proposed to the authors is by far the most effective.
This project was part of a laboratory chemistry course, and the students performing it will continue to work on improving light-choking pigments by creating larger aggregates of plant pigments and photosynthetic bacteria.
Portal "Eternal youth" www.vechnayamolodost.ru based on the materials of Rowan University
14.05.2008