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So Where Are The Fuel Cells?
prostoalex writes: "While fuel cells have been touted as a revolutionary innovation for the electronics industry, they have not hit the market yet. This article in eWeek talks about the current problems with fuel cells, and claims that 'these devices, designed to last as much as 10 times longer than a standard lithium-ion battery, should hit the market by 2004.'" There are a few fuel-cell devices on the market, but this article points out a few reasons they're not yet more widespread.
powering all the damn flying cars, where else?
...in Korea...soon.
I've heard about fuel cells powering the 21st Century about as long as I've heard that I should have gotten a flying car for my birthday last year. First things first. Fuel cells have a lot of potential, but why waste all that extra energy on an Intel-powered notebook? Seriously, why don't the leading developers of fuel cells team up with Transmeta to make an invincible laptop that would blow Dell and Compaq-HP out of the water? That would mark one giant leap for the little guys, who greatly deserve a boost in success right about now.
Calm down, it's *only* ones and zeroes.
I wonder if battery companies are worried so much that they're pushing this thing out of existence.
Why would anyone want to buy a VERY EXPENSIVE laptop battery if you could have a device that lasts 10 times as long and could be refilled with alcohol?
There's the rub. Micro fuel cells may not be allowed on airplanes because the hydrogen-based devices use a highly flammable gas, while the methanol-based devices include an inflammable liquid.
No thanks, I'll stick to my shitty laptop with the one battery that lasts about two hours. Better to have a laptop that sucks down the battery than one that EXPLODES IN YOUR LAP.
Where are all the flying cars? I was promised Flying cars!
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
While residential fuel cell power plants and the benefits of grid-feeding are only in their fledgeling years, it surprises me that you're all THIS imatient about laptop computer battery fuel cells. When did we first hear about these notebook fuel-cells? A year ago? Two tops? I hope you're all a bit more patient with small children, jeeezus!
power to keep from being slashdotted
There's the rub. Micro fuel cells may not be allowed on airplanes because the hydrogen-based devices use a highly flammable gas, while the methanol-based devices include an inflammable liquid.
Ok this doesn't seem to make sense to me. Stick flammable gas in a device that is prone to dropage, electrical, and can reach temperatures of 300F (ever see the fan fail on an athlon? It's not pretty). What happens if you drop your laptop and the gas starts to leak? You turn it on and explode? Wow that's gonna be fun trying to bring it anywhere.
I can't wait to see the first person bring a laptop powered with fuel cells into the white house... "Watch out he's got a bomb!" out of no where 10 secret service agents tackle the unlucky individual, wrestle the laptop away and beat the person into a bloody pulp. Won't it also be possible to bring one of these anywhere, crack open the fuel cell and ignite the fuel with a spark? If there are federal regulations preventing you from bringing the laptop anywhere, what then is the point of having the laptop?
While everyone is quick to cheer on fuel cells as being über enviromentally friendly, as the process only produces water, etc. etc... people fail to remember that it takes a great deal of power to generate the hydrogen in these cells, and this power has to come from somewhere. Therefore, if we're running around with cars, laptops, etc., running these fuel cells and we are still relying on coal/oil power generation, then we are really no further ahead.
Nuclear is my vote for meeting the needs of the future, but i suppose your millage may vary.
I know this is slightly off topic, but it is something that should be kept in mind when discussing hydrogen fuel cells.
-legolas.
The real reason they won't release fuel cells isn't because of problems. The article itself says they last 10x longer than a regular Li. Duh. They won't release them because then noone will want the older batteries. Then they can't gouge the fuck out of us at the register (those things are damned expensive for all the longer they last in my DC3200).
Edison invented a light bulb that will last 10x longer than even today's four and five year bulbs. You can go to the Smithsonian and see it for yourself. But why won't GE and Sylvania, or even Philips, spit one out on the consumer market? Because then they couldn't rope us into buying the nasty bulbs that don't last very long at all. We buy more, they make more money. Simple as that.
And I'm sure the government has computers that far outdo anything that any PC or Server that's commercially available could do. When will we see that kind of power? When they decide that they don't have to charge $10G for a toilet seat to cover this stuff (aka none too soon).
I hate the song, but Puffy said it best: It's all about the Benjamins, baby...
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
I do own a fuel cell. To be exact, it's a small direct methanol cell, which runs on a 3% methanol and 97% water solution. I'm damn sure that 3% methanol is not too flamable.
My guess is that the number one thing keeping fuel cells off the mainstream market is the cost of production. Specifically, the poles of the cell have to be made of platinum. Last time I checked platinum isn't too cheap.
Visit
tcd004
The idea itself is much older than that. It is just that we are slowly approaching feasibilty.
New materials are beginning to make fuel cells feasible. They will happen once everything falls into place.
Look at handhelds: the Palm was not the first by a long shot, nor technically the best, but Palm was lucky that when they came to market, all the pieces had fallen into place and they hit the right price point (and, yes, it was luck).
So, are we completely giving up on flywheels? They may not be too mainstream, but they hold the promise of incredibly light devices (at least they can be) with the ability to hold incredible ammounts of energy, and store it with practically no loss, for a very long period.
That would also relieve the long charging times necessecary with batteries (at least they could).
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
You know they sell flourescent replacements that last a lot longer too, but hardly anyone buys them. Probably because they're more expensive up front, and just plain old mental inertia. Or I could be wrong, maybe all those money grubbing capitalists and evil bureaucrats are out to destroy the planet. We (the USA) should adopt the environmental laws they have in China, Europe and Russia instead. Ya, that's a great idea.
You sir, are a jackass. Please start to care about your surroundings, and how your computer, and car is damaging them for me.
in that crater over there with the dead scientists...
remember kids, don't play with presurized hydrogen!
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
Um, last I checked, Coleman sells a fuel cell generator, as reported in January on Slashdot. For those with no long-term memory, it is an $8k device that offers 1.2KW for 10 hours. Ok, well they haven't gone on sale yet, but it looks like they have most everything figured out. Also, the article links to two websites selling fuel cells right now.
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
Go to this site if you want to know more about fuel cells..
www.h2pac.org
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
I've been an advocate for fuel cells for almost 7 years now, since I've first heard about them. They were only in busses, because of their size, and for 2 years now GM and other companies are boasting in their ads that next year there will be a truck available to the public. We are still waiting.
Meanwhile I've heard of a fuel cell engine assisted bicycle in Europe. I do not remember the company name sadly. I don't know why most of our cities' new busses don't use fuel cells, but I bet it has to do with the cost of finding qualified repair techs, and the fact that some people still think they are science fiction. They work people. Period. Stop supporting oil, and get out there and buy something half decent for the economy and our envrionmental future.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
You'd need something similar to that to provide the kind of energy needed to accelerate and power an automobile at a reasonable rate.
-
You're probably thinking mainly of the Hindenburg disaster when talking about something with hydrogen in it exploding. The problem with that is, A) the Hindenburg didn't explode, and B) it is highly unlikely that the fire that did consume the craft was caused by hydrogen being ignited by a spark. I got this from my dad and then later saw a report on it on PBS. Through a quick search on Google, I found the most relevant page I could, here.
The gist of it is that the skin of the Hindenburg was made of fabric and coated with laquers and metal based paints, and the material itself was highly flammable. (The guy on the PBS documentary had a piece of the original fabric and showed how nicely it burned.) That's why the entire surface of the dirigible burned within seconds and it crashed to the ground, and that's also why it burned with a bright orange flame. A hydrogen flame is nearly invisible in daylight; in darkness it's a pale blue. Hydrogen is lighter than air, thus always burns upwards, not in all directions. The long and short of it is that there were many indicators that a few thousand observant engineers and scientists over the decades should have picked up on, that should have told them their assumptions about hydrogen's involvment in that disaster were wrong. But to this day, the Hindenburg "explosion" is used in books and courses to show how "dangerous" hydrogen is. Just goes to show that just because something has been "known" a for a long time, doesn't mean it's correct.
While we were talking about this (dad and I), he also told me about some experiments he'd seen and/or done many years ago with hydrogen. For example, if you have a tank filled with hydrogen and poke a hole in the side, and light the stream of hydrogen that's coming out with a match, guess what happens? No, it doesn't explode. If it's dark, you'll see a blue flame right at the edge of the hole. You'll see it until there isn't any gas left in the bottle. The pressure of the escaping gas is always just enough to keep it from burning back into the bottle. But there's also another reason it doesn't burn back into the bottle and blow up. Say you stick that match into the hole, guess what happens? The hydrogen will put it out. Poof. Not enough oxygen. See, hydrogen is only flammable in the presence of oxygen. And it's only explosive in tightly confined spaces. So inside you're battery's fuel cell, you'd first have to mix it with a certain percentage of oxygen, while it's still sealed, and then somehow introduce a spark, inside the case, aslo while it's still sealed. Good luck.
Anyway, I just wanted to spread some updated information on the Hindenburg, and I've always thought that whole pure-hydrogen-puts-out-a-match thing really interesting.
Inorder to make major progress in the energy field, either major players like the Oil companies have to sign off or a powerful entity like the US Gov. has to seriously get involved from the bottom up and sustain the effort. (possible but not likely at the moment).
Personally, I believe our energy use is crude. We should be harnessing energy from stuff like the "Van der Waals Forces."
Slashdot janitors = Niggers.
Slashdoti s for Niggers
Slashdot. For Niggers by Niggers.
As I posted on Yahoo msg board...we need a multi-pronged approach to alternative fuel vehicles.
Two big problems with the majority of current thoughts out there are:
1. Longer range and faster charging for electric vehicles.
2. New and fancier technologies.
Problem with #1 is that they're trying to do away with current infrastructures. The current infrastructure is designed so that nobody distill their own gas. They have to get gas from gas stations. With current thinking on electric vehicles, people think they need to 'own their own gas station'...to charge their own cars. So this creates the two dilemas of charging time and energy density of batteries/fuel cells.
Solution: Design cars with generic, interchangeable batteries. Gas stations be converted to charging stations...You don't own the batteries, you exchange used for fresh ones to be recharged.
#2: We don't need a car that runs entirely on hydrogen or some other exotic hydrocarbons. We just need a car with batteries designed as #1, solar cells, gasoline assist, fuel cell generator...These complimentary technology and with the help of computers can direct drivers to the nearest charging station.
When you go home, you charge your vehicles...When in a parking lot, you charge your vehicles. A meter will calculate the cost and you pay upon exit.
I'm trying to say that alternative vehicles are possible today should we ever need to do such a thing...then in the long term, maybe we'll find something better that we don't need batteries or batteries with super high energy density...
Some people will say blah blah...not enough electricity, increase pollution...these are not related to what I'm talking about.
What happens to the byproducts created by these laptop cells (water, water vapor). Is it stored for later removal?
I don't know about you but I would not want water dripping from my laptop
I'm never going to achieve Nirvana with my Karma
They have have wings.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!
90% of the people I see on airplanes with laptops are playing Solitaire or MineSweeper.
Invest in a deck of cards, a pen and a pad of paper. No more battery problem.
You never had a >700mhz laptop on your lap, haven't you?
Intresting question for other devices tough... I don't want my cellphone leaking water, nor my flashlight.
That's an interesting observation, yet planes are routinely filled with highly flammable liquids that make them go.
I suppose it will be interesting as to how they implement a fully-insulated cell.
This sig no verb.
We hook up turbines to geckos and get them to climb to the walls?
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
There once was a US company who built a hybrid car which used a shoe-box sized turbine engine and a small flywheel. They designed both components from scratch and debugged it to the point where they drove the car across country. I don't even think it broke down once (unlike that fuelcell car that just made it's trip x-country and broke down many times).
r dw are.htmi ne/fall97 /9_25/Benrosen.html
http://www.awl.com/englishpages/tech_talking_ha
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/business/botl
there were more links a couple of years ago but now many are no longer posted. There used to be a good one with illustrations and pictures. Anyway, none of the Big Three would buy into their design so they closed shop. Capstone still makes compact turbine engines though.....
Could be a good time to auction off the car on ebay?
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
One thing I have alwas wondered about the type of fuel cells running on 'regular' fuels like /m?ethanol/ or gasoline. Where does the non hydrogen matter go, do you change fuel, or do you keep an extra tank for waste fuel? As far as I understand only with direct hydrogen oxygen fuel cells is the exhaust destilled water, all other types have nasteier waste products. Please enlighten me.
a sig with any other name would be as witty
i propose a new nuclear strategy...let's not invest on high precision, sophisticate technologies....missles that can hit the bulls eyes 5000 miles away...
just produce enough and just point them anywhere...the arctic, an-arctic, population centers, the air, the sky, the ocean...
It's cheaper this way...that way nobody can blackmail us.
Fuel cells from Sulzer Hexis are being deployed in households now: Today Sulzer Hexis stands at the threshold from a research and development team to a production and distribution company. At the end of 2001 a three-year international field test was successfully completed. The production and commissioning phase of a pre-series of fuel cell systems HXS 1000 PREMIERE started in December 2001. This natural gas fuelled system covers the entire heat requirements as well as the basic electricity needs of a single-family home (operating parallel to the grid). The systems obtained CE certification in December 2001 and the first four units were already delivered in the same year. These are being tested within the framework of a pre-series phase lasting approximately three years in co-operation with energy utilities and installers, mainly in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. Sulzer Hexis
Fuel cells will be in common usage in as little at 10 years!
They'll be arriving with broadband...
--the main reason that the generic laptop won't go all work-day long on it's batterie is that most of the people who own them and use them are freaking pussies. marketing research dictates "must be lighter, lightness is paramount, shave weight off". They make perfectly good 5 lb notebooks/laptops now, variety of makes and models. Add 5 lbs of batteries, you still got something that only weighs 10 lbs, would certainly last all day long, but people are so weak and pussified that ten lbs is 'too much", so any laptops built like that with adequate batteries *won't* sell. 10 lbs is 'too heavy" they might get hernias and carpal tunnel and whatnot. Hurt their delicate little wrists. Me, wouldn't bother me a bit to have a 10lb laptop that had redundant decent mileage batteries in it, but they don't make such a critter. I know apple used to make some with dual batteries, wonder what happened to that idea. Oh ya, cd drives now and dual hard drives and stuff, no more room. oh well. 99% of the time my laptop is sitting on a table anyway. I bet most folks 99% of the time it's sitting on a table or actually on their klaps, ie, you ain't holding it up. If I have to carry it, I guess I could struggle and put it in a shoulder bag. I can see me on any of the construction sites I have worked "sorry fellas, I can't work today, this tool/piece of building crap weighs more than 5lbs, and that's just icky". Uh huh, that would fly. Office workers have gone over the edge with the "no physical labor" idea methinks. Maybe, at least marketing sez so, and being as how it's capitalism, I guess it's true. And marketing sez that the average owner wouldn't put up with the extra weight, so, there ya go, laptops that are really nice ,BUT, get not much useful time un connected to the wall wart umbilical, defeating the whole purpose of having a portable laptop computer.
Yes,I am aware there are alternatives like super pdas and a few makes of odd ball laptops that last longer, but most of them fall into the coupla-three hours max range. And the batteries are sucking worse now because they have to be built super thin, screws up the engineering of them, cubical chunky batteries work better and are easier and cheaper to make and last longer, but, marketing says 'super thin", that's what people want. Same thing with cars, the sheet metal is the primary sales feature on cars, always has been, it's how they 'look". Laptops now are just as much an office fashion statement "Look, I got the new x-89 super turbo, only weighs 3.5 lbs, got a 15 gigamess of rammed up chips in it, can connect underwater from bombay to antarctica, and blahyadablah". Running time on this new "must have" wonder, hardly nuthing. ya, but it sure looks cool , and see how light this thing is!
Computing hardware is definetly getting better/faster, but if someone would just go back and put that new and improved computer stuff in a laptop case from like the paleoithic ages of ten years ago, when men were men and could hump 8-9 lb computers without getting the feinting swooning fantoids, with triple decent batteries instead of one puny one, there's a niche market of "power" users who just might buy them and not care about a few more lbs weight.
just a thought to any marketing weasels who might be reading this...
Why do we need fuel cells? If we could get the fatass american public to stay fit and create kinetic energy by riding bicycles , American energy needs would be more than met and the search for alternative energy would be over!
We don't need new things. We need to go back to the old ways. No more new technology, we need to take care of our old people. All you nerds need to work in nursing homes where people are needed. There are no jobs in technology now.
Just be happy with the batteries we have now. Stop trying to change things. OP.
The article mentioned that the fuel inside the cell could be ignited. What happens when one of those live inside a modern laptop, when just about everyone owning a laptop complain about it generating wast amounts of heat? That heat is probably not enough by itself, but imagine a defect in the fuel cell on top of that.. =/
A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to.
Water Cooling!
From what i remember, fuel cells need to use platinum for the catalyst in the H2 + O2 reaction. Platinum is more expensive than gold. I think it's obvious why we aren't seeing more rapid deployment. unless we figure out a way to
a. use less catalytic material
b. find a new catalytic material
c. increase the supply of catalytic material
then we're not going to see fuel cells in wide spread deployment.
Imagine your typical LA rush hour with 1 million cars bumper to bumper, all running off flywheels. A guy on his cell comes off an entrace at 60 an rear ends another car. It explodes. His car explodes. The cars next to them explode. Pretty soon you've got -- literally -- a 1 megaton explosion engulfing LA.
Other than that, flywheels can be made to work. You can run 2 wheels in opposite directions to cancel the angular momentum. You can put it all on magnetic bearings in a vacuum to eliminate the friction. You can make it as small and as powerful as you want.
But no matter what you do, when they fail, they release all their energy in the nastiest possible way. Simple conservation of energy.
Wait -- you could surround each flywheel with a cloud of microscopic black holes that would absorb the blast! It's so simple!
Remember that a fuel cell is just a battery that stores its fuel externally. Also, fuel cells are seldom designed to be reversible, i.e., you can't apply electricity and produce fuel.
The usual proposal is to store the fuel in some sort of cartridge that you replace when it's used up. Presumably you'd have to go to the local store to buy these cartridges.
But isn't that what you already do now with devices that use primary (non-rechargeable) batteries? This is exactly why secondary (rechargeable) batteries are so popular. It's a lot more convenient to just plug your depleted batteries into a charger where they'll be ready by morning. No store trip required.
So the only advantage I can see for the fuel cell is when the device requires so much energy that conventional (primary or secondary) batteries are too heavy or bulky, and you don't have frequent access to external power for recharging. This may be the case for some laptop users, but is it really that hard to carry a few spare batteries and swap them out as needed?
Sure, I'd like to see a safe, inexpensive consumer fuel cell on the market. But it will have to compete more with primary (nonrechargeable) batteries than with secondary (rechargeable) batteries. And primary battery chemistries (e.g., lithium) are already available that have much higher energy densities than any secondary battery. So unless those fuel cartridges are a lot cheaper (and no less safe) than alkaline or lithium batteries, they won't have much of a market.
A few facts about flywheels for you morons posting stupid replies.
First, you could use a lightweight material, and simply have it spinning much faster. Doubling the weight may double the power, but doubling the speed quadruples the power... Think fast, not heavy.
Second, even if it is so poorly designed that it is a common occurance that they shatter, a kevlar jacket could be put around each one, or a group of them...
As far as a battery for your laptop... What the hell are you talking about?! Flywheels wouldn't work too well in a light-weight object that needs lots of power. But we were talking about fuel cells. Most people aren't going to be too happy using a fuel cell, since it will leak a great deal of water while in use.
As for applications... There was a slashdot story some time ago that flywheels were going to be put to use in the international space station. No place on earth would it be as dangerous to have the risk of projectiles, so NASA apparently seems to think the risk isn't very high.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
.. is not that they last only two-four hours with laptop use. The real problem is that they only last two years before they are totally worn out and you can toss them away. Not too long ago, my dad had to get a new cellular phone because he couldn't find batteries to his Nokia 8110 anymore. The phone was perfectly good for his use and the only reason why he had to get a new phone was because the battery would only last 15 minutes. That's how dead it has gotten in three years. Most of the 2+ year old laptops I've seen have the same problem. PDA's, CD and MD players, same thing. They get a lifespan of 2-3 years simply because their batteries will go dead in that time and you won't find replacements because the stores and factories have moved on to new products.
Appreciate the links. It's a good idea, but maybe they didn't go far enough.
They say they simply used unleaded fuel to turn the turbine, but why? With a turbine, you don't need the high grade fuels that you do with a piston engine. They could have used any flamable liquid (or any combination of liquids) to generate power.
It would be a good transition vehicle. You fill it up with clean fuel XYZ when you are at a station which carries it, but can just as well use gasoline when you don't have the option. The fact that less refining would be needed would drop fuel prices to dirt-cheap.
That's just the beginning. A turbine really doesn't have anything that could break down, so your car could (possibly) run practically forever without maitenance. In addition, since the type of fuel can be anything, you might have fuel competitions! So much for bombing middle-eastern countries...
Umm, did I mention I am an engineer? I've never designed a vehicle before, but a turbine-driven car has great potential (to get someone assinated by the 'powers that be' anyhow). I might just consider doing some more with this idea.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I'm actually rather pleased with the new split in laptop designs. You have 'portables', large, relatively inexpensive laptops with desktop-class performance but only an hour or so of battery life; and ultraportables, small, light laptops - perhaps powered by a Crusoe chip - with long battery life and easy to tag along wherever you go. For the daily commute, you have your entire desktop with you. When travelling light, the ultraportable will still be able to handle most computing needs. Of course, fuel-cells would improve both designs considerably.
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
We did the arithmetic and he's completely right, in the UK at least. With our high usage we started saving money in just six months. Try filling in figures for your local suppliers below and see for yourself.
1 kW hour electricity costs --> £0.05
Incandescent bulb costs ------> £0.40
Fluorescent bulb costs -------> £5.99
input power (Incandescent) ---> 100W
input power (Fluorescent) ----> 22W
life time (Incandescent) -----> ~1000h
life time (Fluorescent) ------> ~5000h
After 1000 hours of use the incandescent bulb has cost £5.40 while the fluorescent bulb has cost £7.09. If you frequently destroy bulbs by accident or due to bad power this may be a deal breaker.
However after 3000 hours the conventional bulbs have cost you £17.00 and wasted half an hour of your life finding and installing replacement bulbs, while the fluorescent bulb has cost just £9.29 and is still running perfectly.
Many people object that fluorescent bulbs have a less pleasant color. Even if you find that to be the case, it's probably important only in a few areas of the house, places where you read or sew or use a PC. In utility areas, corridors etc. you can save a lot of money by using these low energy bulbs.
Look at the benefits:
Replenishable energy source (they're self-reproducing!)
Requires only convienent pellet-sized fuel and water
No explosive gasses or dangerous chemicals
Waste products are naturally biodegradable
You sir, are a jackass. Please start to care about your surroundings, and how your computer, and car is damaging them for me.
If you have a problem with the way I'm polluting this planet, you're free to move to the moon.
Just think... the just fill 'er up and long duration flights of glow plug engines without the mess and noise, with the the quietness and (hopefully) cleanness of electric motors, without having to worry about having four charged battery sets because you've only got 5 minutes flight time/ battery...
G.E. sells CFL's (Compact Flourescent Lights) with an average lifetime of 12,000 hours (8 years). There are also a number of places that sell incandescent bulbs with a 20,000 hour lifetime. The filament is about as thick as a pencil; there are several theatre supply stores which sell them online. Here is the G.E. reference:
f l_ release.html
http://www.gelighting.com/na/pressroom/pr_all_c
The Berkeley Fire Station also has a 40 watt bulb (also a G.E. bulb) that has ben burning continuously for 100 years now. This has been verified boh by G.E. and by Ripleys and the Guiness book of records (direct linking not possible; sorry).
-- Terry
It's funny how even slashdot folk are worried about 6 oz of hydrogen (perhaps even nicely packaged as methanol), but aren't worried about 15 gallons of gasoline travelling at 70 mph in a very thin steal box being pumped through little plastic hoses by a submerisable electric fuel pump.
In Risø Denmark there is a pretty large research group working on fuel cells. They always planned to sell to industry, but only recently private companies believed so much in the idea that they started to invest large amounts of money Their website contains some very nice ram files :)
...I meant obscelesence. As someone who has recently gone through the painful process of cleaning up a flooded basement due to hot water heater giving out, it's quite clear. Devices have built in obscelesence otherwise people woudl not purchase more. Batteries die in a given amount of time and people run to the store to buy more. Where is the incentive for Energizer or Duracel to make their batteries 10x more efficient? Cares with 100mpg have been built but the patents have been bought by the big three and locked away. Look what happened to Tucker and his automobiles. I'm not condoning this practice but obscelesence is a common factor in a capitalistic society.
The newly patented Motionless Electromagnetic Generator (MEG) could make all other energy sources obsolete. See http://cheniere.nii.net/toc.html and click on the MEG patent status link in the upper right corner.
I can walk into any Riders Hobby shop and pick up a fuel cell. They are in the educational kits section. It has both a way to generate your own hydrogen+oxygen from a solar cell and then you can run the fuel cell from the gasses you just created to spin a motor.
Granted HIGH power fuel cells and an abundance of hydrogen and a safe way to transport it are not here... but I can buy fuel cells at a regular store all day long.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
All those complaining about how long-lasting lightbulbs have been suppressed by the evil lightbulb cartel should ask themselves "when was the last time I had to change my car's headlight bulb?" Those things last for ages, but cost a lot. You get what you pay for ..
Back in the 80s Pop was playing with a home darkroom and I helped out a bit and learned most of it. He bought a product called "ParColor" out of a small ad in a photography mag which claimed it was a color print process that was only two steps and had a fairly wide temp range.
Damned if it didn't work as advertised. I can personally testify to that. I helped print them and one hung on the wall in the living room until fire destroyed the old house in 2000.
But the on topic part is when he called to order more they told him they had just been bought be Kodak and couldn't take any more orders. Never heard of that process again.
Democrat delenda est
Correct me if I am wrong but part of this knee jerk as it relates to the CANDU goes back to the cold war, when we were using breaders all the time to get plutonium. There was a law passed banning breader reactors for comercial use. The CANDU is a breader, but it consumes it's own plutonium without reconfiguration.
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
You can call it what you want but in 1986 I lived 50 miles from the launch pad and it was one disasters fireworks show that left 7 people dead ... I will never forget it.
The point is in a airplane you are already in a pressurized cabin with a ready O2 source and your cool little full cell little fuel cell adds hydrogen to the mix.
http://www.cif.rochester.edu/~gnana/ece399/challen ger.htm
From
January 28, 1986
The temperature at ground level at Pad 39B was 36 degrees F. That was 15 degrees F cooler than any other previous launch by NASA. The Solid Rocket Boosters (SRB) were ignited, and the thundering noise started. At 0.7 seconds after ignition, videotapes showed black smoke coming from the aft (bottom) field joint of the right SRB. The aft field joint is the lower portion of the SRB. The black smoke suggested that grease, joint insulation and rubber O-rings were being burned. The smoke continued to come from the aft field joint facing the Exterior Tank, on cycles of 3 puffs of smoke per second. The last puff of smoke was seen at 2.7 seconds.
Challenger crew (Francis R. Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Ronald E. McNair, Ellison S. Onizuka, Judith A. Resnick, Gregory B. Jarvis, Christa McAuliffe)
The black smoke was an indication that the aft field joint was not sealing correctly.
In flight, flashes were seen on Challenger. Three bright flashes shot across the Challenger's wings, 45 seconds after lift off. Each of the three flashes lasted only 1/13 of a second. These flashes had been seen on other shuttle missions and were not considered problems. They were completely unrelated to the flames that were seen later during the flight. At 59 seconds into the flight, flames were seen coming from the right SRB. These flames were originating from the aft center and aft joint, at 305 degrees around the circumference of the SRB. The flames were burning gases that were escaping from the SRB. A fraction of a second later, at 59.3 seconds, these flames were well defined, and could be seen without enhanced film.
As the flames increased in size, they begun to push against the External Tank.. The SRB is attached to the External Tank by a series of struts alongside the External Tank. One of these struts is located at 310 degrees of the circumference of the SRB. As the flames grew, they pushed against this strut, with an intense heat of 5600 degrees F, making it hot and weak.
The first sight that the flames were hitting the External Tank was at 65 seconds, when the color of the flames changed. The color change indicated that the flame color was being produced by its mixing with another substance. This other substance was liquid Hydrogen which is stored in the External Tank. The External Tank stores Hydrogen and Oxygen in two tanks. The top tank contains Oxygen and the bottom contains Hydrogen. Pressures changes from the Hydrogen tank confirmed there was a leak. Forty-five milliseconds after the color change, a small glowing light developed between the External Tank and Challenger's black tiles.
At 72 seconds there was a sudden chain of events that destroyed Challenger and the seven crew members on board. All of these events happened in less than two seconds. By now the lower strut, connecting the right SRB to the External Tank was extremely hot and very weak. With the amount of force given by the SRB, the lower strut broke away from both the right SRB and the External Tank, allowing the right SRB to rotate freely around the top struts. With the SRB out of control, the bottom of the SRB swung around hitting, burning and denting Challenger's wing. At 73.12 seconds into flight a white vapor was seen from the bottom corner of the right SRB.
The tank of Hydrogen inside the External Tank ruptured and released liquid Hydrogen. With the sudden absence of Hydrogen, there was an extreme force that shot the Hydrogen tank forward into the Oxygen tank which also burst. As the two intertanks collided, the top of the right SRB on the outside hit the top of the External Tank, and also broke the Oxygen tank. The white vapor seen was the mixture of Hydrogen and Oxygen. At 73.14 seconds, all the structures failed. Only milliseconds after the white vapor was seen from the right SRB, the glow turned to a fireball in a huge explosion. The main explosion was the Hydrogen and Oxygen that came from the External Tank. Challenger was traveling at a speed of Mach 1.92, at a height of 46,000 feet, when it blew up. The last recorded transmission from Challenger was at 73.62 seconds after launch, when it truly fell apart.
We live in a capitalist civilization. If there's a real good out there that can be built that will out do what the other guy is making in all measurements, it will be built.
Not necessarilly. While I agree the person you responded to is a little more cynical about people's motives (particularly the scientists) than reality probably warrants, there is no question that, as a result of the patent system and the ability to 'own' excusive rights to an idea for an extended period of time (previously, 17 years from getting the patent, now 20 years from filing), good ideas do routinely get purchased and suppressed by their entrenched competitors.
Oil companies have bought patents on alternative fuel technologies and sat on them. Indeed, the fact that we now have fuel cells even available for consideration is due in no small part to some of those patents expiring.
Razer companies have bought the patents to self-sharpening razers, and buried them. The consumer will not see that technology until the patent expires, and perhaps not even then as Gillette is likely to patent other aspects of the manufacturing process for another 20 years, processess that may be relatively obvious, but are difficult or impossible to avoid if you want to make the device.
This disgusting habit of purchasing patents and suppressing new innovation is common, quite possibly widespread, and ultimately results in the kinds of things the original poster was ranting about.
Their rant however was misdirected.
It is not the capitalist system that is 'conspiring' to prevent technological innovation, it is the patent system that is facilitating it, and indeed making the practice quite profitable to entrenched corporations. Capitalism is as much a victim of the patent system as the typical inventor[1] and consumer are.
Until the mythical notion that patents somehow 'encourage' innovation rather than stifle it has been thoroughly debunked in the popular mind, and the notion of granting monopolies, which are antithetical to free markets and competition, is replaced with something less destructive to the marketplace of ideas and the deployment of technolgoies, we will continue to see numerous promising improvements like this buried and suppressed.
Until then, your optimism will, I'm afraid, be as off-base as the venom the person you responded to was.
[1]The typical inventor doesn't own his invention, his employer does. The typical inventor has no rights to his work, or his invention, and will suffer civil penalties if he or she goes off and impliments their invention on their own.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Paragraphs would be good...
Until the mythical notion that patents somehow 'encourage' innovation rather than stifle it has been thoroughly debunked in the popular mind, and the notion of granting monopolies, which are antithetical to free markets and competition, is replaced with something less destructive to the marketplace of ideas and the deployment of technolgoies, we will continue to see numerous promising improvements like this buried and suppressed.
;)
Wouldn't it be easier to just render "Buried" patents unenforceable? i.e., Gilette buys the patent, but the patent is worthless if they are not engaged in acts that a reasonable man would find to be conducive to getting the razor to market.
Until then, your optimism will, I'm afraid, be as off-base as the venom the person you responded to was.
Probably. But between the two of us, we come somewhere closer to the truth.
And that's a limited resource on planes, isn't it? What happens when you get 10-20 of these things going at once, and start using more O2 than was designed for? Or am I missing something fundamental? (like planes recycle air, or take air in from the atmosphere, and presurize it?)
Zapman
However you've missed a few points:
a) quite a lot of the fuel cells plan to use alcohol, that's about as dangerous as a bottle of whisky.
b) hydrogen is only an issue in strong concentrations below a certain concentration it doesn't combust- ventilation is important, but then it's important anyway with laptops
c) both Hindenburg and Challenger, the H2 wasn't the issue. In both cases they were already very screwed before the hydrogen even caught. Those solid rocket boosters were/are disasters waiting to happen. The SSMEs can be shut down. SSRBs cannot.
d) hydrogen isn't much more dangerous than natural gas
e) there's a difference between detonation and conflagration. The LH2/LOX mixture wasn't a detonation- it was only a conflagration.
f) there's far, far, far more energy in your car fuel tank than in a laptop... think about it.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"The work that Betavoltaic is doing might be a solution to this problem. They seem to be making batteries that will last almost forever.
That'll get you enough energy to keep the turbine running.
In Yverdon, Switzerland, a bus which stored electric energy by a flywheel and recharged at every stop, the recharging took about 30 to 40 seconds. It entered regular line service in Yverdon's public transportation system in 1953.
There's an article about the past, present and future of flywheel systems at the University of Dresden. (Language: German).I think they used unleaded fuel because it was readily available and showed how you could still use the existing infrastructure. I like your idea of a multi-fuel system though. Mainly because of the competitive nature of it.
;/
Capstone is still in business and if you are REALLY interested, you might still find someone there willing to work with you on it.
Also, I recall reading up on how they built the flywheel and it really looked like most of the R&D time/effort went into the flywheel. With shock absorbsion, floating bearings, explosion capturing, etc.
I'm still of the mind that fuelcells and flywheels belong in the home power system FIRST and not in automobiles. I think the competition in the auto industry makes it more "approachable". Kinda like in the computer industry where you have to see if there is even a snow balls chance in hell that Microsoft would be interested in your product. If they are, there's no/little future for YOU to make a profit. Other than purely selling out for less than what it's worth.
Didn't the oil industry purchase the patent on NiMH batteries????? I thought I remember hearing Toyota and Panasonic were being sued over the SHAPE of the NiMH batteries in the Prius.... Ah, progress.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
The problem with methanol fuel cells as opposed to Hydrogen fuel cells, as I understand it, is that methanol fuel cells get clogged by carbon deposits.
I don't know if this is fixable, I believe some models of fuel cells try to burn off the carbon with high temperatures.
Hydrogen fuel cells don't get fouled by carbon but the fuel is harder to handle than the methanol liquid.
I think methanol cartridges are the way to go in the short term but they probably don't have the long life span you think of, only hydrogen fuel cells have that.
- -- Truth addict for life.
Fuel cell != independance from oil
They'll likely run on natural gas, methanol (made from natural gas) or hydrogen (made from natural gas).
Sorry, I meant to say, "Stop supporting BIG oil." The efficiency of fuel cells, should in my opinion mean that the oil we have in North America will be an adaquate supply.
Plus we don't have to use hydrocarbons forever, since we can cultivate hydrogen using other methods. A team in California say they have cultivated an algae that gives off hydrogen gas when it digests its food. This and perhaps other innovations will be enough to produce hydrogen sources that can replace much of the oil and natural gas we use today. Ethanol is another energy source, using distilled grain, that may prove useful. Anyone know the chemical composition of ethanol?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Mind you, it is a solar charger that will peak at 2 watts, so running a laptop would be somewhat excessive. You are able to daisy-chain these devices to get more power. Information on the iSun is here.
At least you don't worry about having consumables with you. I'd imagine that on a long trip, you'd probably want to carry extra fuel for a fuel cell, which probably wouldn't go over well with the airlines.
Obviously you dont see longer lasting, environmentaly friendly as advantages. As for rechargable...either you bring them back to the store (like empty bottles, your full celluloid-ish camera roll etc), or 'they' will bring out a home-recharge kit.
But then again, I bet you fill up your car with petrol at home, too.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
http://www.greenwave.com/products/appliances/3029
Excuse me, but what is the point of inserting a space in URL's that aren't A HREF'd? I'm just wondering because I see everyone do it. I understand with e-mail address because they can be harvested if you don't take extra precaution, but with URLs? Is this a part of slashdot's comment system? Or is this for a good reason? Just wondering, thanks in advance for a response.
It's very problematic doing anything with automobiles if not for the engineering but also because of the lawyers who love blaming things like 'clients running into light poles while drunk and sueing the light pole manufacturer and installation crew for negligence'.
BUT, why not use some of these new ideas in safer places? Like putting flywheels in subway stations to help stop incoming trains AND starting them off. The flywheel is stationary and there's always energy to put into it and very soon a need for that energy. And it could be purely mechanical or mechanical on braking and use as electrical energy on starting by adding shunting into the existing elecrical system.
Modern electronics can now control secondary braking systems if the flywheel system isn't effective or fails.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
And what is the difference between an explosion, and say something burning "really really fast"?
this is not a troll, I'm really asking. Is there a certain burn rate where something can then be deemed as an explosion? Does there have to be a high pressure shockwave created?
> Until the mythical notion that patents somehow 'encourage' innovation rather than stifle it has been thoroughly debunked
Once upon a time, patents did encourage innovation. But that was long ago in a population far away.
The implementation, today, is as corrupt as corroded battery (pun intented).
Better would be to changes patents such that a patent could be used by anyone, subject to them paying a reasonable per unit fee. Same fee applies for everyone, even the "owner" has to recognize it as net income, not subject to offest by other expenses. Any attempt at unreasonable would be anti-trust and can have the fee set for them by the courts.
Like everything, we need to get back to a world where money is the primary, if not only, medium of exchange. Screw all that noise about T&Cs serving as "compensation". Pay a dollar, own a thing. Period.
There is no difference, only a matter of perception.
Most "explosive reactions" tend to be decomposition reactions, while combustion is generally an oxidation reaction. Some explosives, like black powder, use combustion. Explosives like TNT use decomposition (breaking a triple N-N bond).
Don't be fooled though, just about any flammable material, in the presence of LOX, will burn so fast as to be indistinguishable from an explosion. Soaking a charcoal briquette in LOX and throwing it on the ground would be sufficient for it to explode like dynamite.
LOX and LH2 ARE explosive together.
The formatted caused me to skip the dude's "i was there and I cried dammit!" post entirely.
Yup, it's part of Slashdot's comment system. The fundamental problem is a bad design decision in the HTML standard - tables expand when the content does not fit in the allocated horizontal space, instead of it being forcibly wrapped. So by inserting a single really long word, you could make the whole page flow really weirdly. Slashdot's "solution" is to make sure there are no really long words. They insert spaces after 20 characters.
There was recently a dmeonstration of a wind up battery charger on UK television designed by the company behind the wind up radio. With the prototype a 30 second wind created enough power to use an MP3 player for 5 hrs. I heard somewhere that Motorola had licensed this technology to use as a mobile phone charger. Certainly beats plugging a mobile into the mains for 8 hrs, and has so many possible uses.
Imagine a non nuclear submarine with Fuel Cells!
Just "switch on" the fuel cell and you have electric power.
- No generators means no noise means less visible/hearable for other submarines/ships/sonarstations.
- They can dive longer than Diesel/Fuel submarines before the need to recharge their batteries with noisy (fuel) engine/generators.
A german shipyard HDW has this fuel cell know-how.
Why do you think some US banks wanted to buy this special german shipyard? The US Navy want some new toys!
NoSuchGuy
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
Yes, but bright efficient lightbulbs that last for decades are. Check out this link to the nightlight that's been burning since 1901. The secret to that light's longevity is that it is - like so many /. posters - a dim bulb. :-)
I play Nerd-Folk!
Kinda. You can take a block of TNT and set it on fire. It won't explode. IANAC (chemist) but I believe the difference is that fire requires fuel, oxygen, and heat to ignite while a high explosive required fuel and a good shockwave to detonate. This is why dynamite requires a blasting cap - the blasting cap explodes, creating a sufficient shockwave to detonate the dynamite. Black powder, on the other hand, burns rather than detonates.
I'm sure google is your friend at this point...
Well, the real problem with fuel cells is that, as hydrogen is readily available from water in more ways than I can count (electrolysis, bouncing a powerful laser beam, whatever), the use of it would derail the economies of the oil producing companies (but the US doesn't really care).
More importantly, it would destroy the oil companies of the US (and these are fueling politicians on all sides)
Thus, fuel cells will not fly unless laws are passed to get rid of the oil
it takes much more energy to seperate the hydrogen out of water than the hydrogen itself produces so, you still need a conventional form of energy to create the fuel
but I think that the hydrogen could be made with a less reliable/portable system such as solar or wind power and then you could have the hydrogen all of the time and the sun/wind only when its there
Bottles.
I went to a presentation by Ballard Power about 10 years ago regarding their fuel cell technology. I recall at the time one of the speakers saying that they needed someone to invent a a hydrogen "sponge" to really move things forward into the mainstream quickly. Since this has yet to happen (amongst other issues), things are proceeding at a much slower pace.
Don't forget - cows produce a shit-load of methane....;-)
I don't understand the chemistry (count me as one geek who never really understood stochiometry/balancing of chemical reactions), but it utilises something called "sodium borohydride" which is made from borax, which is supposedly abundant. Now, one thing I haven't managed to figure out from the site is whether the hydrogen exist naturally in the borax derivative (and released by the reaction with water), or if the hydrogen has to be put there (ie, chemical reaction to create it, then water releases it). If someone could tell me, that would be great.
Let's suppose it needs to be put there (or you need a way to get hydrogen cheaply). You need a source of borax, but you also want hydrogen. One method of obtaining hydrogen from water (though I don't quite understand the process - though I know a version of it is used in commercial production of hydrogen) is to pass superheated steam over hot iron (red hot? dunno). This method was used back in the early 1800's to produce hydrogen (called at the time "combustible air") for gas ballooning - it is what caused gas ballooning to win out over hot air balloons (well, that and coal gas). Prior to that, hydrogen could only be made with iron and dilute sulferic acid mixes, that didn't produce hydrogen quickly enough (had to wait days to fill a balloon).
So, if you need to put the hydrogen in the borax - what do you do? Build a production plant near Barstow, California! This area is very near to the town of Boron - a major borax producer, and Barstow hosts a major solar generating plant (solar tower using steam and focused mirrors). Now, use two such plants or systems - one superheating water to steam, then pass the steam over the other heating iron very hot, thus obtaining hydrogen from water using the sun's energy.
I am NOT saying you will get more energy - that isn't my claim. I am saying that this would be a method to get a large hydrogen production plant going, that would be non-poluting in production (the industrial processes I was speaking of that do a similar job utilise petroleum systems and some kind of water mix to produce the hydrogen), and using the energy of the sun - it would be a method of storing solar energy in the production of hydrogen (which could be stored in the borax, or if that isn't what happens, used in some other manner).
Is this thinking flawed - ie, the method of producing hydrogen using solar energy? If so, why? If not - then WHY ARE WE NOT DOING THIS (outside of startup costs, etc)?
We are talk 100 year old technology...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Actually... Hydrogen is flammable, but it doesn't explode -It's a fuel, not a catalyst, and hence it's just as dangerous for a small, contained amount of Hydrogen gas to be on a plane as it is for you to be on a plane - heck, and you'll burn longer than it will, so you're more of a hazard.
conflagration - to burn _really_ fast.
eg: Imagine the way a cigarette burns, from end to end, the flame must travel along the object. A conflagaration is the same thing at high speed.
Detonation - to release energy vi shockwave.
(Note very simplified)
A shockwave is generated in the presence of heat, the shockwave acts as a catalyst to a chemical reaction that results in a large release of energy, and typically waste gas. Detonations result in significantly higher blast velocities than conflagration, though I don't have exact values at work.
eg: The much publicised C4. A common army exercise for sappers during explosive training, is to play catch with balls of C4 (or similiar). You can also burn it, it burns a bit slower than hexane(?, the solid fuel in ration packs), the purpose of a detonator is to create heat and a shockwave, they are typically two stage, a conflagration using a primer, which sets off a charge of more sensitive explosive (mercury fulminide) which detonates the main (less sensitive) explosive.
An ANFO charge can take up to a three stage det to detonate, depending mix, etc. Otherwise it will just burn.
That's pretty damn shweet.
Oops. In 3D, it all comes out the same. No isomers.
Even in the worst case, a gas tank has a small amount of air in it relative to the the amount of gasoline. You still get a big boom, but that's just a tiny amount of gasoline vapour going off. The bulk of gasoline gets spread and burns.
The only way to get a gasoline to release all its energy is to mix it with air before you ignite it. It's called a fuel air bomb, and the US used them in Vietnam to carve out football field sized landing zones in dense forest.
Failure for a flywheel is anything that stops it from spinning. The only ones that can power a car spin in vacuums on magnetic bearings. Any breach in the vacuum, any contact between the flywheel and its casing, and things go bad real fast.
This doesn't mean flywheels are useless, it means that any flywheel needs to kept in a housing that can contain the energy of the wheel when it fails. The only flywheels in use are either buried in the ground or only used for small amounts of energy. Flywheel busses recharge every stop. Flywheel cars so far have really been hybrids that only use the wheel to store energy for active breaking.
The the active breaking systems for the NYTA trains do both -- they only store enough energy to smooth out the power transfer between breaking and accelarating trains, plus they are put in a big undeground room.
Demonstration systems that run a lightbulb for a few minutes are just that, toys.
The cranks who think flywheels can be scaled up to replace gasoline in cars -- or that you'd even want a kilowatt hour one in your laptop -- don't understand physics, and are flakes on top of that.
I'm not sure how this notion that Nuclear power is inexpensive came about. Even with massive govenment subsidies (US gov't promises to take care of all your waste for free), the nuclear industry in the US has failed. No new reactors have been ordered since the 1970's (except a few cancelled orders.) Why? Wall Street knows a bad investment when they see one. Nuclear reactors are extremely expensive to build. (On the other hand wind power is now being built by private companies for a profit and they've solved one of the two environmental impacts - new blades move more slowly and are much less likely to kill birds. The second impact is only a problem if you don't like how windmills look.)
Additionally this safety issue seems to have gotten little attention. I'll leave that for other posters, and just say that the new generation of designs dubbed "inherantly safe", which are less likely to fail catastrophically, still produce tons of radioactive waste.
Jon
PS Lest you think me an anti-nuclear zealot, I'm all for fusion. I enjoy the sunshine and believe that the billions that we are spending to make fusion work for power here on earth is money well spent. Fusion would have a much better waste/power ration.
The City of Austin (which provides electric service in Austin), has a fuel cell in service. It was mentioned in the newsletter which came with my last utility bill.
They said they got it to gather experience with it, because it was the up-&-coming thing. They did mention it was connected to the grid...
They included a photo; from the ambulance in the background, it looked to me as if the fuel cell was 8'x12'x6'. Don't remember if the blurb mentioned cost or power output...
I was going to write more or less the same stuff, then I noticed your post. So here we go ...
"...designed to last as much as 10 times longer than a standard lithium-ion battery..."
What about recharging? The techdocs of my battery claim an average of 400 full discharge/charge cycles before I can throw it away. This means that, if I often am on battery rather than AC power, I can throw the battery away in 2 years or less, and then have to buy a new one (because I was dumb enough to only get one.)
Now, if a fuel cell can withstand the same number of recharges, but still lasts 10 times as much each time, this means I'm gonna buy a new laptop before I'm gonna buy a new battery --not something they prefer.
Something designed to last for a lifetime has big selling problems --you sell it only once. (That's the reason why stuff is usually designed to *need* an upgrade or a total rebuying every N years ... it's called "programmed obsolescence".) Lightbulbs are an example.
Another example is chemical soap. There are more efficient cleaning and cleansing techniques than the chemical soaps commonly used, based e.g. on ultrasound, and they are also more efficient (really provide "cleaner" stuff), less polluting ... it's used e.g. in hi-tech labs where "clean" is really important. But give one of these to the avreage housewife, and one is going to last for her whole lifetime ... no you don't want that if you *sell* soap.)
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
There's lots to be done first.
e lls/inde x.html
For example for car fuel cells:
http://www.cartech.doe.gov/research/fuelc
Lots of things from the fuel cells themselves to filters to reformers to catalysts to coming up with standardized fuels for testing so that people can compare experiments meaningfully.
GM is building some.
--- I hate my sig
Anna B