Slashdot Mirror
Toshiba To Show Laptop Fuel Cells at CeBit
war3rd writes "According to The Register, Toshiba has finally been able to build a fuel cell for laptops that they will unveil at CeBit next week. The fuel cells are expected to last approximately 5 hours and are compatible with existing lithium-ion batteries. Form factor remains the only issue. The trick is that they use the water by-product from the cell to dilute the methanol source as it enters the reformer, and are therefore able to store higher concentrations of methanol in the cell. My only concern is how quickly can they get this to market?"
Is the best site for information about Fuel Cells
Even with a good catalyst like a fuel cell has, the reaction that takes place has a temperature of several hundred degrees Centigrade.
Sounds good for a little hot action on your laptop!
The answer is that there is nothing in it for them. Manufacturing for OEMs means they have more control over the market and can get more cash per unit. The hard drives, optical drives, memory, CardBus, and mini-PCI all all standardized ways of manufacturers getting cash off the commodity laptop market. Meanwhile, the motherboards, case, power supply, battery, and display manufacturers make a killing by charging so much. Same reason Apple doesn't want clones, letting the market get too open and the prices start running down and eliminating profit margins very quickly. That is why PC laptops are almost as pricy as Apple laptops, and manufacturers recognize a good thing when they see it.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Methanol != Ethanol
Ethanol's what's in vodka, methanol is poisonous.
Here is the methanol safety card. I don't see these on airplanes anytime soon. Anyway, remember those old photocopies from the 70's/early 80's that made pages with blue text? They always smelled a bit and came out a little wet. Yup, methonal was the fluid used in them....
-Sean
You "recharge" by popping in a new cartridge of methanol, which should be cheap ($3-5 initial starting price, probably down to $0.30 eventually. You don't actually have to plug the laptop in for a few hours to recharge it either, so on that long airline flight you can run the laptop indefinitely with enough little cartridges. I saw a pic of a prototype cartridge once somewhere, it looked about the size of a AA battery.
Methanol on an airplane is hardly anything to worry about. It's no more dangerous than ethanol, which of course the airline will happily let you drink as much of as you want as long as you keep paying. It burns, but so does ethanol and paper.
Explosion? Nah. It would be a very difficult task to get so much methanol vapor that an explosion would be much more than alarming pop--the same pop you could get by inflating a barf bag with your breath, twisting off the opening, and POPping it with your fist.
1) you misread this - it's methanol, not menthol.
2) methanol is a poison. Low levels of methanol will permanently blind you. At higher levels, you'd be dead. "Denatured" alcohol is ethanol ("normal" drinkable, get drunk on alcohol) with very low levels of methanol. It's used in industrial processes. There's not enough methanol to screw up most reactions that require ethanol, but enough methanol to make it poisonous to drink so people wont use it as a way of avoiding government taxation.
Although I don't know about this particular fuel cell as it mentions more concentrated meths, one made by PolyFuel received air clearance and I think was mentioned on /. itself.
Hydrogen is the preferred fuel, but it is unstable and difficult to work with. Methanol (which is easier to handle) can be used in conjunction with a reformer, which basically extracts the hydrogen from the methanol.
At that point, it is the same thing as a normal fuel cell, just a bit less efficient
HowStuffWorks has a good explanation about it http://science.howstuffworks.com/fuel-cell.htm
Given the battery life of an iBook, adding a fuel cell to an iBook probably means you could extract 8 or 9 hours.
Don't tell me that wouldn't be convenient, with a recharge being as simple as swapping methanol cartridges.
GPL Deconstructed
The Inforworld link (that I was submitting at the same time that this story got posted, BTW), says they will be available in 2004.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Yeah, it's toxic, but so is ethanol. Methanol is mostly only toxic due to secondary effects. You can get drunk on methanol and feel fine... for a while. The problem is what happens in your body once it starts breaking it down.
:) The ethanol has a much higher affinity for the dehydrogenase so it prevents the body from breaking the methanol down into toxic things.
Methanol breaks down via alcohol dehydrogenase into formaldehyde and formate, which of course are pretty toxic. Ethanol breaks down into these things also, but the body does a much better job of breaking ethanol down more completely.
The antidote for methanol ingestion is ethanol ingestion. Really.
For this reason, if you drink something like ethanol denatured with methanol, you will probably not die, but only get very sick.
Also, some commercial drinking alcohols contain small amounts of methanol, which is likely why you get more of a hangover when you drink cheap liquor vs. the good stuff, you actually slightly poisoned yourself.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Actually, that's CO2 emissions, not CO. At worst, you might feel a little light headed but in no way poisoned.
Given the battery life of an iBook, adding a fuel cell to an iBook probably means you could extract 8 or 9 hours.
Don't tell me that wouldn't be convenient, with a recharge being as simple as swapping methanol cartridges.
While ~10 hours is cooler than 5, I don't think it is that much better [yes, technically it is *double*]. For it to make sense, it would need to last 20h at minumum to convince the majority of manufacturers and users to make the switch. It would also be nice to not have to throw away a spent cart.
It's a value proposition. Can companies make more money by switching to the fuel cell technology? My guess is that it isn't at this time. Maybe in a few years when everything gets smaller/faster, but not now.
I still think fuel cells in cars is a better idea than laptops.... of course now we're talking about a completely different fuel.
Blocklevel: Practical Information Architecture
Laptop batteries have their own costs. A quick check of Dells website shows them selling a battery for $130, which is advertised as being good for 500 charges. That works out to about 25 cents a charge, assuming that the cost of electricity is negligible. If a fuel cell can approach that cost per charge ratio and not wear out, I'd rather go that route.
I am NOT a man!
I am a free number!
Very safe.
People aren't yelling about how scary and flammable vodka, or any other strong ethanol containing liquid is, but for some reason when they hear the word "methanol" associated with fuel cells it only takes nanoseconds before someone is screaming about safety...
If you live somewhere with cold weather you've probably used diluted methanol in your windshield washer for godssake! Did it explode then?
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware