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Fuel Cells Promised For Next Year
An anonymous reader writes "According to an article in today's New York Times, fuel cells for portable consumer electronic devices will start appearing next year. First for laptops, and later for smaller devices like cellphones. Among the interesting benefits of fuel cells over batteries is the ability to swap cells without having to power down the device." The article mentions the Toshiba cells demonstrated at CeBit, and -- no surprise -- Japan is likely to be the first market for these tiny fuel cells.
There is one other very important aspect of micro-fuel-cells which, as far as I know, no company has latched onto at least in public.
40% ethanol/60% water is a significantly less efficient fuel than methanol, but it is realily available (although heavily taxed) almost everywhere in the US as Vodka, as well as being much cheaper as denatured alcohol.
The probable ideal fuel cell would be able to operate on denatured ethanol (for lower cost) as well as straight vodka. It would be incredibly useful for one to be able to refill the fuel cell using something readily available from most airline beverage services and hotel minibars.
Improvements to allow impurities (eg, Tequila, Whisky) would be even better, as now the fuel cell can operate on a wide variety of commonly available fuels. Allowing the cell to operate over a wider range of alcohol as well (20%-80% ethanol) would now allow even more variety in fuels as well as using more dense (and more efficient) fuels.
In 10 years, my personal bet is that most portable fuel cells will be ethanol powered, specifically for the fuel-availability convenience.
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It isn't necessairly vaporware this time... Toshiba has actually demoed a fuel cell laptop already at CeBit.
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I want a fuel cell that runs on odorized propane. About 1/2 to 3 kilowatts average, with the model in the 1/2 to 1 kilowatt range fitting in about a cubic foot. Either water or air cooled is OK.
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Hydrogen is the obvious fuel of choice for portable fuel cells - it packs more energy than any other (non-nuclear) fuel into a given amount of mass.
The problem is finding a safe and efficient mechanism to transport the hydrogen. A fuel cell powered by a canister of highly compressed hydrogen gas could have the destructive power of a grenade if ignited... not something you'd want sitting next to you on a plane or subway. Meanwhile, the logistics of transporting liquid hydrogen (which must be kept cool at cryogenic temperatures) are such that it will probably never be used in portable fuel cells.
Considering how important viable hydrogen storage is to our future economy, it's amazing how few research dollars have been directed at the problem. One possible solution is sodium borohydride in an aqueous solution. Hydrogen is released when the NaBH4(aq) is passed through a catalyst. The solution is completely stable and nontoxic at room temperature, yet stores more hydrogen per liter than liquid H2.
Lets just hope that "the fuel" doesn't go the way of printer ink, highly over priced just for the tech market and warrently invalidating if you use a generic product.
I also wonder if the battery industry might start lobbying Congress like the oil/auto industries do. Or maybe they'll be smart and get in on the innovation themselves. Is there less profit to be made in fuel cells? You don't have to replace them often, which means, as a producer, you don't sell as many.
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And why do a lot of people in the US seem to think we are the vanguard of scientific research and development. Sure, some things apear first but many, but as I said many things are developed elsewhere first.
Is it regulation, funding (or lack of), or is the US not a good testbed for new technologies? Or is it all of them? I can see many madical things being developed or used overseas because of FDA regulations, and common sense tells me the average American needs help turning on a computer, let alone figuring out one of those newfangled (read: oldfangled :]) 3-G cell phones.
And as for standards...if they're going to replace As Cs and Ds, sure.
Total non sequitur, but... whatever happened to "B" cells? Was there ever such a thing?
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--the "state of the art" now in mobile computing reminds me of that late 60's horsepower wars. There's the same basic mistake. Instead of making the engine more efficient, they basically increased the displacement to ridiculous levels. sure they started having fuel injection, but that's about it, it was just "bigger", less efficient, necessitating "more fuel" to accomplish the same tasks of basically transportation.
The better bet (maybe, this is my general question really) right now with fuel cells versus batteries is actually back to where the power is needed and what for and why exactly. Bigger and bigger chips (engine displacement) using more and power, more and more RAM needed, necesitated by apps that really are just huge, just humongous. How much of it is really necessary as opposed to "because we can" and it's easier to code to that inefficient set of standards?
Perhaps-just a thought, but perhaps, if there was a revolution on coding going back to small,mean fast and efficient, then maybe we wouldn't need bigger and bigger chips and more RAM to run everything? And the batteries that exist now would work adequately, last longer, not wear out as quick and we wouldn't have this "computer energy problem" as much? Is there a legit link between code bloat and energy useage that could be addressed? If programs were really written with "energy conservation" in mind, would this help? I dunno but I got a suspicion that coders knowing that the CPUs are bigger and faster and that there's a lot more RAM avaialable might make them skip little bits of code that would improve efficiency, and thereby borking energy conservation.
I don't know, not a coder, but I am more or less doing the same general computing stuff I did years ago, but it takes "more" of everything hardware-wise and including more electricity to do this stuff. The real only change I can see is occassionaly I look at some streaming video, but besides that it's the same, I browse, email, listen to the net radio, do IRC and etc, same stuff I did years ago, but now I need a bigger everything to do this. I know there's any number of immediate exceptions to the rule now someone can drop, 'I run super 4-d magnum quantum compiler, I need all I can get' and etc, that ain't my point. Does code bloat lead to hardware bloat that causes code bloat and back and forth that is responsible for batteries falling so far behind we have to screw around with fuel cells?
right now i take my segway to work, passing a few gas stations which one day might be hydrogen stations. when i get to work, i plug my laptop in which gets 4-5 hours of battery life (at least). i also plug my segway in. this cuts out a middle man, no additional things to buy, no pumping, no replacement cells. battery life will get better as it always does. my other laptop, a tablet pc gets like 6 hours of juice. i like being able to be more "free" this way. power plants get better over time, the pollution they might cause is in one controlled area. to charge my ht or laptop it's pennies, literally. it sounds like fuels cells are good for finding new $ for a market that is getting it's power from the existing infrastructure.
With corporate buyouts and changes it is unclear when this will be out, but Coleman was to offer this industrial fuel cell delivering 1Kw for about $5000: http://www.airgen.com/airgenindustrial.shtml
The entire system was bought out by Ballard who is notoriously slow to deliver anything; maybe this will be an exception: http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/030219/192127_1.html
While most slashdot posters appear to be luddites, a good source of info on fuelcells is: http://www.h2fc.com/news.html
Just remember to wear your hip waders so you don't get any marketing bullshit on you while you are finding the real information.
But lithium ion laptop batteries only last approximately one year of regular use, and less for the average consumer that does not take proper care of the battery.
If fuel cells cost less than a dollar or two per recharge, it would cost less than batteries, and offer much better convenience (if you're going on a long trip, just stock up on 20 fuel cartridges and you're set- no worrying about finding a place t recharge/extra batteries/ac adaptors, etc)