EXTRACTION OF ANTHOCYANIN PIGMENTS FROM MALABAR SPINACH FRUITS AS A POTENTIAL PHOTOSENSITIZER FOR DYE-SENSITIZED SOLAR CELL

The implementation of synthetic dyes gives a better efficiency with higher durability; however, the production process of synthesizing these dyes is more complex, expensive, and involves the use of toxic materials. For these reasons, the production of such dyes can pose harm not only to humans but also to the environment. An alternative for the synthetic dyes is the natural dyes or pigment extracted from plants such as anthocyanin, carotenoid, chlorophyll and many others. These natural dyes are easily extracted from various parts of plants, such as from the fruits, flowers, leaves, and seeds. Regardless of the limited performance of natural dyes, the natural dyes exhibit advantages, including high absorption coefficients, highlight-harvesting efficiency, inexpensive, ecologically friendly, non-toxic, and are easily extractable. Moreover, this research paper is mainly focused on about extraction of anthocyanin dye pigments from Malabar spinach fruits for Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC). The experiment was conducted using three different methods; extraction of anthocyanin pigments from Malabar spinach fruits: a.) using pure methanol solvent, b.) using 50% methanol solvent, and c.) using 50% methanol & 1% HCl solvent, and the resulted data were 160.81 mg/L, 64.62 mg/L and 77.65 mg/L respectively. It can be concluded that the extraction of anthocyanin pigments from Malabar spinach fruits using pure methanol solvent has the highest amount of extracted anthocyanin pigment, which is 160.81 mg/L.