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Portable Fuel Cell Technology
Quite a number of people have been writing about the announcement from Motorola concerning their new fuel cell. The new approach is an innovative one. They are using methanol, wood fuel alcohol, in a patented approach. Power claims are "twenty hours for laptops" and a month for cell phones - and it's small enough and light enough that it could simply replace a battery. I'd love to have something that could do that - better than the maybe-an-hour-and-a-half with my Vaio.
Someone else pointed out an EPA report on methanol, which is very toxic to humans and other animals as it is processed by the liver. With enough in your body you will die, non-lethal doasges will probably kill most if not all of your liver. I would be worried about replacable cartidges not being resilient enough to withstand dropping or some such (methanol has a low boiling point which means in alot of cases it would be gaseous). Batteries aren't safer for the most part but they are sealed pretty well, enough for use in your children's electronics. People talked about methanol replacement cartridges bought like replacable pen cartridges, I think I'd like a little heavier aluminum cases or something. Besides methanol's toxicity, there is the question of pollution. They will be producing water and carbon dioxide, humans produce much more than their share of carbon dioxide already, proliferation of this fashion of fuel cell would increase that. I'm all for the longer lasting battery but you have to weigh it's TOTAL cost against its apparent costs.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
This brings a whole new meaning the phrase: my battery is running out of "juice"! :)
Let's see, you can't use a cell phone on an aircraft taking off in case it screws up the electronics and everybody dies in a big fireball.
People are killed every day while talking on the damned things in their car.
There is still a controversy over whether holding a long-distance broadcasting antenna against your scalp for hours each day might cause some statistical increase in brain tumors.
Now we're not only going to have cell-phones that carry (and must be refilled with) little cannisters of flammable fluid, but poisonous fluid that smells, looks, and tastes like some really wicked vodka.
Would I be taking it a step too far if I added hypertension leading to heart disease from not being able to ever get out of earshot of the office?
I think natural selection will favor those who communicate through smoke signals and hollerin'.
Just to clarify for the people who don't seem to grok this: this cell runs on methanol, not ethanol. Methanol is something you ought not to drink (unless you're Kitty Dukakis, although that may have been isopropyl IIRC). It causes blindness and other effects worse than those caused by ethanol, although cirrhosis and driving fatalities might give it a run for its money.
On the plus side, the fuel won't have to be denatured and there won't be any taxes enforced by the BATF.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
I hear that the inheritors of the Iridium satellites are prototyping a DSL-rate two-way IP service to go for about $300/month.
Just a rumor...
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
What I'm curious about is what the airlines/FAA are going to say about people bringing electric devices which carry little vials of combustable poisionous liquid with them onto airplanes? Anyway food (not drink) for thought.
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
I see a constant flow of stories like this; "We have a cool new technology that will revolutionise the way you do such'n'such. It'll be available in 5 years."
What's the point?
Technology changes very rapidly. It's entirely possible that other power sources will be tapped by then. We might all move to low power consuming devices. Motorola might decide to scrap the project.
In short, I'd rather companies didn't come out with these press releases until they have something solid to offer, at least a "production starts next week" or similar.
--
bje
007: Thats great Q. Will this mean that I wont have to recharge the phone between missions?
Q: yes, but more importantly, all you have to do is ignite the antenna and throw the phone like a grenade and it will make a explosion covering a 10" radius.
007:How about this laptop?
Q: Explodable
007: WEB tablet?
Q: Explodable.. all you have to do is type in http://www.microsoft.com, count to 5, and throw it.
LW
Silicon Valley, Slashdot News Mysterious startup Transmeta unveiled its Crusoe processor today. The new, low power processor is designed to address the chronic battery life problems facing laptop users.
"Look, I'm tellin' ya, Captain, we need more power or the laddies will get on the plane without their data. The processors canna take anymore, captain!" said David R. Ditzel, CEO of Transmeta.
"Well, I dunno, it sounds great," remarked Billy Carlyse, a 7-11 employee in Skokie, IL."but it'll probably be obsolete before anyone sees it. The industry trend is for rapid obsolescence-- and Transmeta has been working on this for five years!"
As if on cue, Motorola announced a new fuel cell battery, promising unlimited power for laptops. In response, Transmeta has announced a halt to Crusoe production. They will now be doing Linux distributions and portals like everyone else.
Aha! It's about time. Fuel cells really have significant potential.
Think about it, electric vehicles suffer from two problems: range, and recharge time. Range isn't a problem for a commuter, but since when is the only use of a car commuting? Because demand for these vehicles is so low, outside government policy, the companies must find a way to expand the reach of the battery packs.
The second problem, really a corollary or perhaps even a cause of the first, is the fact that it takes so long to recharge a battery. I can refill my gas tank in a few minutes, but I have to leave an electric car plugged in whenever I'm not driving to keep it charged. I thought that we would see "plug in batteries," like those in the hand tools.
Drive in to a "gas" station, unplug your battery pack, plug in a new one, and go. The station keeps a bank of them recharging at all times. This seemingly simple solution is probably not cost effective, at least with current demand on electric vehicles. So the charge time stays limited, limiting effective range, limiting demand, limiting the spread of electric cars.
Not so for fuel cells! Fill 'em up like a gas tank, and you've got electric power. Existing stations could be used, putting methanol in the tanks instead of gasoline. No need for overnight charges, no need for battery swap stations, no need for anything but someone to make the cars.
Let me know where I can get stock.
Has anyone noticed that this technology is coming from the same company that also invested heavily in Iridium, which was(is?) plagued by bulky and heavy handsets that have trouble sending a clear signal inside buildings?
Instead of just making the current devices run longer, this technology might also be slated to increase the viability of technology like Iridium gaining broader customer appeal.
After all, when you spend billions to launch a bunch of satellites, what is a few million more in fuel cell research to make the system viable?
This same technology might also make many technologies we don't currently think of as portable, portable. Try thinking of replacing the plug, not swapping to a different battery.
Zor
"We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking." -Mark Twain
Are these things meant to be throw away? From the sound of it, either you buy a whole new one or refill the methanol manually:
They would use small plastic canisters similar to those used for fountain pen ink. Consumers could easily check the methanol level to find out when to replace the fuel cell, which will likely cost as much as or less than traditional rechargeables, Ooms said.
This would really suck! I don't want to change batteries ever. I want to plug the thing in or even better, have it recharge through solar and kinetic sources. Who wants batteries that need to be replaced all the time (expensive)!
Fuel cells have been around for many years and it is pleasing to see them making progress in the direction of mass use but to date there has been one problem yet to be overcome. Methanol is highly volatile, highly flamable and has a low flash point. As such I'm not sure what the airlines are going to think about half the passengers in business class carrying a pint of the stuff in their laptop bags, in containers that have to go the compression and decompression each landing and take-off.
While I look forward to being able to use this technology we are going to need to see clear evidence of the safety of the products before we will be able to travel with them.
If intelligent life is too complex to evolve on its own, who designed God?
Now, if the government would just let us start converting cannibis into methanol again, we could run our laptops for days off of pot.
This might seem trite, but there's a serious side here. If Motorola &C can turn this technology into one capable of -- cheaply -- running, say, an automobile -- then demand for methanol is going to go up. WAY up. Right now we easily produce enough cellulose (in the form of corn cobs, wheat stalks, &c) to meet our present demand. Once we run cars off the stuff though, we may need to look for other supplies of cellulose...and cannibis farming will probably be the cheapest solution.
It's pure speculation, but interesting to think about, nonne?
Finding God in a Dog
Fortunately for those of us who like a drink, the human body is quite efficient at metabolizing ethanol. The first step involves partial oxidation of the ethanol into the equivalent aldehyde ethanal (CH3CHO). This is removed by further enzymic reactions eventually culminating in carbon dioxide and water as waste products.
As it is chemically similar to ethanol, methanol is initially acted upon by the same enzymes, partially oxidizing it to form the equivalent aldyhyde methanal (CH2O). That's the IUPAC name for it; you may be more familiar with the "trivial" name formaldehyde.
So if you drink wood alcohol you get formaldehyde as a metabolite byproduct. Now, anyone who has done biology at school will at some point have seen preserved specimens of animal tissue floating in a jar of liquid. That liquid is formaldehyde.
It's used for specimen preservation because it pickles animal tissue, toughening it in the process. As it's readily absorbed by (and quickly reacts with) soft tissues, it helps to preserve delicate structures that would break up in most other cheap preserving media.
Unfortunately two notable soft tissue structures in the human body are the retina and the brain.
So, to summarize: the reason why wood alcohol causes blindness and insanity is that the metabolic byproduct, formaldehyde, literally pickles the brain and retina. Cool, eh?
Since the congeners present in most alcoholic beverages include a small amount of methanol, if you're a heavy enough drinker you will obtain the same tissue deterioration to some extent. Though your liver will probably pack up first. And you'll be too pissed to notice anyway.
Cheers!
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Your laptop will produce visible steam when the humidity is high enough. Don't try to use it in a closed box, it will suffocate.
The methanol fuel is toxic, but the by-products aren't. see the EPA's chemical summary This isn't much different from batteries which are generally also toxic.
The methanol must be very pure, or the fuel cell will stop working.
Making methanol is a lot easier than making batteries, so it should be a lot cheaper eventually. Safe packaging and purity requirements will make it more expensive at first.
Ballard Power Systems (BLDP) is doing stationary fuel cells for homes, and for cars. Plug Power (PLUG) is doing cells for homes, and Manhattan Scientifics (MHTXE) is currently developing these micro-fuel cells which Motorola and others will probably be licensing.
If you're interested in fuel cells, check out those companies, and also check out my fuel cells mailing list. Info is available on how to subscribe at http://reality.sculptors.com/lists.html