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Laptop Methanol Fuel Cells Promised This Week
securitas writes: "Wired tells us that Germany's Smart Fuel Cell is about to ship the first methanol based fuel cells for laptops and other electronic devices. The company says a 120 milliliter fuel cell can power a 15W notebook for 10 hours, and you can refill it without shutting down."
It's a Pit-stop
If only NT could stay up that long.
I wonder if they'll allow them on planes. Not that a few milliliters of methanol seem dangerous compared to the dozens of tons of kerozene you sit on... But it'd sure be nice to be able to play Quake on those long-haul flights!
/max
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
Doesh it *hic* mesh up your *hic* documentsh like *hic* I do when I'm dhrinking methanol *hic* ?
jer
We may be human, but we're still animals
- Steve Vai
The infrastructure for methanol will have to be vastly improved before a methanol fuel cell battery will ever be successful in laptops. I work as an integrator, and I take my laptop on-site for a lot of the jobs that I do. Most days on-site I work for 10 hours or longer on a system, carrying my laptop from place to place. The batteries drain, but my two batteries usually have the life to last through the day. When I get back to the hotel at night, I can plug into any outlet to fuel up the batteries.
With the methanol fuel cell, I would need to carry extra charges with me. On a week long trip out of state, that can be a lot of charges. With the current security measures in place at most airports, I doubt that I would be able to take them on the aircraft. Now I need to rely on the local shops to carry the fuel cell cartridges, which may or may not happen, depending upon my location.
Also, if I'm staying in a hotel, charging my batteries is free. If I use the fuel cell, I could get charged $3 per day or more for using my laptop. That's not much if I can write it off as a business expense, but if it is for my two week vacation to Alaska, it can get fairly expensive.
I prefer the convenience of using chemical batteries. I can charge from anywhere, and in a lot of cases, for free.
"There is no way hydrogen is ever going to be allowed aboard an airplane," Stefener said.
I think this is an overly dismissive statement. Methanol itself is really just a hydrogen storage method. You throw in some carbon to stabilise the hydrogen and as a result, you produce carbon dioxide when the fuel is used up.
There's a lot of work going on to find non-chemical storage methods for hydrogen, such as sponges or matrices that would be explosion-proof. There's no reason to believe that this won't eventually succeed in a safer and more efficient fiel cell than methanol based ones. It will just take longer.
Karma police, I've given all I can, it's not enough, I've given all I can, but we're still on the payroll.
Where does this water go? Does it evaporate or am I going to have to take my laptop for a pee?
--
billwashere
The other problem is that planes are closed environments. Just as you can't smoke on a plane, it seems possible that any emmisions given off by fuel cells other then water vapor might also cause them to be banned. It may be that the battery won't be abandoned just yet.
"...With just a brisk pump of your foot, you will never worry about a dead battery again. With just a few pumps of the "STEPCHARGER" you can instantly begin to charge your laptop, cellphone, video camera and much more"
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Will a peaty single malt gum up the works?
The question is: Will the laptop appreciate the fine flavor of its fuel? I rather doubt it. Do what you like with your Scotch, but there's no way I'm putting any of my Cragganmore or Laphroaig into a fuel cell.
--Jim
If so, I can eat airplane peanuts on my Melbourne to London flight and power my laptop with a strategically placed tube from my MethPort to my... well, if you are here, you've got an imagination...
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
As others have mentioned, the availability of the fuel for these fuel cells is what is going to kill or break it. I wouldn't much mind filling up my laptop while I pump my gas, as long as it only costs me 33 cents extra. You just know if this technology takes off the methanol industry will recognize the demand and increase their bulk prices to be more expensive in smaller quantities. That's how it was with gas and oil when the car became mainstream.
It's going to be a tough haul convincing consumers, especially because most don't see that they *are* acutally paying something when they plug in their laptop or cellphone to charge. You also can't beat the distribution of electrical outlets. There may be a fuel cell depot at every gas station and news stand, but I doubt there will be one right beside your bed.
Personally, I'm still holding off on my hydrogen from air bit, or burning oxygen for fuel. We have plenty of "fuel" in the air, why not use it? And what about energy from plain old H2O we've been hearing about? Burn both the Hydrogen and Oxygen and you have no waste.
Ultimatly, we will have to see. For now I would be for a hybrid battery/fuel cell slot system where you can get the instant fill-up when you need it, but still not be left in the dark when the minimart in All Pains, Michigan doesn't cary your fuel cell brand.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
can power a 15W notebook for 10 hours,
Anyone know what the typical notebook draws? A brief simpleminded look at my Tosh suggests more than 15W... (label on bottom says 19V, 3.5A. Therefore power is 19x3.5?)
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
The article says the 120ml cartridge is "enough to power a 15W notebook computer for 10 hours". I seriously wonder whether that 15W is realistic, considering most modern CPU's draw several times that at rated speed -- and you've also got disk drives and display. I suspect 150 Watt-hour is pretty similar to the capacity of the larger laptop batteries. Of course, you could carry a dozen refills in less space and weight than one spare battery...
The other question is how the paranoiac, irrational, and just plain stupid airport security people are going to react to that cache of flammable material. Methanol is pretty similar to cigarette lighter fluid (for the old-style lighters with wicks), and should be safer than butane. But IIRC there are about 28ml in an ounce, so 120 ml = 4 ounces, which could make a bigger fire than you'd want to deal with in close quarters. I think the Russians in Stalingrad would tackle a German tank with an 8 ounce soda bottle filled with gasoline -- three methanol cartridges would be about equivalent in energy.
Of course, another idea would be to trim back the bloatware so you didn't need such a powerful CPU or a continuously spinning HD...
I can reliable get 5-6 hours with my extended life battery on my vaio under heavy usage. Under typical usage it would go 10 hours.
If battery usage were really an issue with most laptop users, manufacturers could easily hit the 10 hour mark with more efficient/dimmer backlights and underclocked processors (no one needs 1GHz in a laptop anyway).
The problem is that its a rare laptop user that isn't far from an outlet. Sure, some people want to take a jaunt down to the beach to work on The Great American Novel for 10 hours - but those people are hardly enough to provide a strong market for fuel cells in laptops.
-josh
A lot of people don't seem to've noticed that this unit won't exactly be convenient to carry around. Their 25W prototype is 120x160x170mm (5"x6.5"x7") and 2.8kg (5lb)! That's less than a large desktop-equivalent laptop but almost double the weight of some lightweight models. I don't know how many road warriors will really want to triple their carry weight and pay extra money for a few extra hours of runtime. It will probably seem much more convenient and cost-effective to get one of those LiPoly external batteries or something.
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Methanol is by itself almost completely non-toxic; the danger arises from the metabolic breakdown products.
When you ingest ethanol (aka grain alcohol), alcohol dehydrogenase (an enzyme)catalyzes the oxidation of ethanol to acetaldehyde. If you oxidize acetaldehyde, you get then get acetic acid, which can then be oxidized to carbon dioxide.
Conversly, when you oxidize methanol (aka wood alcohol), you get formaldehyde. If you then oxidize that, you get formic acid. The formaldehyde and the formic acid are both toxic with formic acid being the more toxic of the two. The formaldehyde attacks the sensitive protein in the retina making you blind while the formic acid is what kills you.
Because the rate limiting step in methanol oxidation is availability of alcohol dehydrogenase, the clinical treatment for methanol poisoning is, you guessed it, to give large amounts of ethanol. Because the alcohol dehydrogenase has a higher affinity for ethanol than methanol, giving you ethanol will keep the methanol from being catabolized. The "unprocessed" non-toxic methanol can then be cleared by the kidneys.
Also, it should be noted that the prohibition on distilling has absolutely nothing to do with public safety. It is a taxation issue pure and simple. I suggest you pull out a history text and read about something called the Whiskey Rebellion.
It sounds like just like razors and razorblades - sell a cheap razor requiring proprietary razorblades and lock-in your consumers to your brand.
Until companies snap out of this mindset I don't see the technology taking off. You can still make a massive profit by selling them for a buck each or even making refillable ones and your customers will love you for it. The first company to get a clue is likely to see their sales rocket.
I thought I'd wrap up a number of points in one post rather than make several replies:
"Also, if I'm staying in a hotel, charging my batteries is free."
It's not free, the hotels expect you to do it and build it into the cost. If methanol becomes popular with travellers, the hotel will pop down to the hardware store, buy a couple of gallons of methanol, and offer that free on tap to guests too.
"This will become even worse if cells arrive that run off of pure hydrogen-PEM (proton exchange membrane) fuel cells that run on hydrogen"
All PEM fuel cells run on hydrogen. Methanol based fuel cells simply break down the methanol into hydrogen and its constituent parts before it hits the PEM.
"However, if the methanol charges for the fuel cells are not rechargeable themselves, we will be adding a MORE exhaust to the environment, in the form of the disposed charger."
You don't recharge a methanol cell, you just squirt in more methanol to replace what has been used up.
"Ok, fine methanol works as a safe hydrogen storage method, but I was under the impression that fuel cells use hydrogen AND oxygen to create electricity and as a byproduct create H2O. Where does the water go?"
Methanol is 50% oxygen, 37.5% carbon and 12.5% hydrogen. So yes water will be produced and there must be some drainage tap (so you will have to take your laptop for a pee on the plane). There will also be carbon deposits you will have to dispose of. I wonder also how often the PEM has to be changed, as carbon will clog it up if not effectively filtered out.
There are plenty of fuel cell articles at Future Energies, including how a fuel cell is heating my local swimming pool! Check it out.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
We seem to be developing some weird urban legends relating to electronic devices. My cable TV company ordered me not to install an FM splitter on my own -- if not done by a "trained technician" (snicker), it might cause airplanes to fall out of the sky. Many gas stations now ban people from talking on their cells while fueling, because somebody told someone that they'd heard somewhere that a gas station was destroyed when sparks from a cell ignited the fumes. (Think about it, what has more circuitry, a cell phone or a car?) And of course, flight attendents have all kinds of vague safety rules they have to enforce, most of which they don't actually understand. So you can't use your computer if it has a CD drive, because somebody thinks lasers are an issue. And somebody decided "anything with an antenna"...
I'm sure their "refueling" procedure involves a special tool designed to avoid spills. Methanol can be absorbed through your skin, but if you have a proper system in place you can do it safely. As for using ethanol instead of methanol, you can't just substitute one alcohol for another and expect it to work...
This, of course highlights the stupidity of current FAA regs on what can be carried aboard aircraft these days. Leaving aside the possiblity that I'll have an easier time hijacking a plane by beating people with my shoes than threatening them with a nail clipper...
Lighters (and likely these methanol cartridges) are banned on board. Yet I can carry my Lithium-Ion powered Magnesium laptop on board. Have you ever seen a Magnesium fire? Right, but it's hard to light. Now, have you ever seen a Lithium fire? Do you know what happens when you short a Li-Ion battery? (Heck some Apple, and I think IBM Li-Ions didn't even need to be shorted)
So we're all allowed to something that approximates a thermite grenade, but they're worried about nail files. [sigh]
Bruce Schneier was right. It's not about security, it's about the appearance of security to convince the sheeple to fly.
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