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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.
When does Zippo release their laptop?
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
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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Fuel cells have been mentioned as becoming mainstream power sources for about 10 years now. My patience is being tried as a consumer to the point when it really does arrive I'll be skeptical about it.
They have a long way to go in the marketing aspect of fuel cells, because we can already see the obligatory posts about fires and such. Power sources have the potential for fires and explosions, yes. I've heard ordinary computer power supplies blow up when the capacitors overheat, and we all know about lithium + water. For fuel cells it will be no different, so we'll just have to make sure that the designs are sound before welcoming them onto our laps and pockets.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Now for high-end applications, this would no doubt be a godsend, no matter what the fuel cartridges would cost...but for general consumer use, even if they DO last 30 times as long as batteries, it's still going to be costing more, since chances are you won't be able to recharge them yourself. And as for standards...if they're going to replace As Cs and Ds, sure. But the article mainly talks about applications where the batteries people are already using are non-standard. We might end up seeing something akin to the ink/toner market, with something being made non-standard just so that it can be priced at some ungodly margin.
Also, I'm no expert, and I don't even follow this topic very closely...but every article I'd read previously about fuel cells mentioned that they get pretty hot. I mean like broil a roast hot. How hot are these tiny little fuel cells going to get, and would that worsen the already tricky problem of heat dissipation in notebooks?
AMERICANS may have to wait 20 years, if not longer, for cars powered by fuel cells to become a familiar sight. But much smaller forms of fuel cell technology may well power electronic devices like laptop computers, video cameras and cellphones by the end of this decade.
Prototypes of long-lasting fuel cells that can replace batteries are being tested in laboratories in the United States and overseas. "Every big electronics company in the world is working on fuel cells in one way or another," said Jerry Hallmark, manager of Motorola's Energy Technology Lab in Phoenix. Some, like Intel, are going a step further and investing millions of dollars in start-up companies like PolyFuel and Neah Power Systems to accelerate development.
"There are some applications that are getting very close to commercialization," said Mike Lynn, head of a unit at the 3M Company that makes fuel cell components.
Mr. Lynn declined to be more specific, but many analysts expect fuel cells for consumer electronic devices to begin appearing next year in Japan. The betting is that the first to reach the market will be Toshiba, which is demonstrating a prototype of a methanol-powered cell this week at a trade show in Hanover, Germany. Toshiba says the cell could be sold next year with laptops.
Some 200 million to 500 million of the small cells, sometimes called microcells, might be sold annually by 2011, according to Allied Business Intelligence, a market research company in Oyster Bay, N.Y., that tracks new technology. Annual revenue to the fuel cell companies could be as much as $5 billion, said Atakan Ozbek, Allied's director of energy research.
But Mr. Ozbek and others said that despite the momentum of research and development, widespread microcell commercialization is not yet a sure thing.
"People underestimate the complexity of the system, and start-up companies have been cavalier about the availability of all the components they will need," said Dr. Brian M. Barnett, director of the electromechanical systems practice at Tiax, a technology consulting and development company based in Cambridge, Mass.
Like the fuel cells for cars promoted by President Bush and the even larger units being developed to provide electric power to factories and homes, most microcells generate electricity by chemically stripping hydrogen of its electrons. The electrons form a current running outside the cell while the positively charged ions left behind move through the cell. The ions and the electrons are recombined in a reaction with oxygen to form water, the only byproduct if pure hydrogen is used.
The basic concept for fuel cells was discovered in 1839, but researchers differ on the most practical way to design them to generate the most energy in the least space.
Fuel cells run most efficiently on pure hydrogen, but storing hydrogen compactly and safely is a huge hurdle. Many designers of large and small fuel cell systems are trying to get hydrogen from solid compounds that contain hydrogen or hydrocarbon fuels like methanol and ethanol, even though those fuels add other elements like carbon dioxide to the waste stream.
MICROCELLS have several economic advantages over their bigger cousins in the race to commercialization. Energy experts expect to cut the smaller cells' production costs to be competitive with those of batteries long before larger cells can be manufactured at anything close to the cost of internal combustion engines.
It should also be easier and less expensive to persuade retailers to sell fuel cells the size of battery packs than to transform the huge national infrastructure of gasoline stations.
But the biggest reason the smaller cells are expected to become popular sooner is their appeal as a convenience -- something that consumers have shown a willingness to pay for -- and not as an answer to energy and environmental problems.
Fuel cells that last far longer than do rechargeable batteries would free laptop computer users and television camera crews, for example, from the need to lug he
HI, MY NAME IS ISAAC.
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.
I work for a small rural telephone company. I can't wait until fuel cells are economically feasible.
We often have to spend $10-20k to get the power company to run power to our cabinets that use less than a kW of power. It would be great to have a fuel cell generator and a 500 gallon propane tank to power sites like this.
I don't believe most of the 'digital divide' propaganda, but to the extent such a thing exists being able to have power where we need it (inexpensively) could make a difference.
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.
You just invented the best expense-report loophole in history! Huzzah!
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.