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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.
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 safety concerns of alternative fuels are highly overrated. Contrary to popular belief, hydrogen is NOT explosive except in some pretty odd geometries, which you are never going to attain in any type of fuel cell, nor in the environment around it, should the hydrogen leak out. It is indeed flammable, but much less dangerous than, say, gasoline, or lighter fluid. Before someone makes some lame crack about hydrogen-filled zeppelins, it is extremely important to note that it was NOT the hydrogen that exploded/burned in disasters such as the Hindenberg, but rather the magnesium-based paint that was coating the hydrogen envelope. Methanol is a bit more exciting, but still a perfectly safe chemical to use with the proper safegaurds. You would think that your laptop would cease to be a useful computational device long before you subjected it to enough force to crack open a high impact plastic shell intended to contain flammable materials.
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).
Light? Remember F=MA. The storage capacity is dependent on mass and accleration. The lesser the mass the higher the accellerations (i.e. velocities) involved. The higher the angular velocities the less stable and more dangerous it becomes.
.. 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.