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Fuel Cells To Appear In Laptops In 2004
prostoalex writes "The overhyped fuel cells will finally be delivered to the portable computing market. Toshiba and NEC will incorporate fuel cells into the laptops by 2004. Sony, Hitachi and Casio are expected to follow the suit. The tests show a fuel cell lasting 10 hours. With the form-factor of a Bic lighter, it allows the laptop user to carry a few extra cells in the laptop bag all the time. Battery prices are expected to run at about $200."
Sounds rather like a potential weapon to me. In which case what's the point?
I want to know if the fuel can be stored in a canister like butane is, and have it so you can refill the little cartidges with somthing like that, so you can buy the stuff from any place like a gas station or any other type of store, for a cheap price. I also want to know if Apple has plans to embrace the technology, and if they could cram the entire fuelcell into a battery pack, so it can be an option to use a recharage laptop battery or a fuel cell, and have it use the same slot, etc. Out of curiousity, do the 12/15/17"PBG4s and the iBook have the same type of battery, as it would help a new option of a fuel cell in a batterypack form come along, and it could be easially refilled. Any input on this?
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"The issue isn't 'Are flammable liquids safe on an aircraft?' They already are allowed with liquor and perfume,"
If I had my druthers, perfume would be banned completely from all flights.
But seriously, the main problem is that these fuel cells can be easily reconfigured to contain highly explosive materials for use as portable bombs. In this highly charged anti-terrorism atmosphere, it is important to make technology as transparent as possible. The more a technology relies on bomb-like batteries or razor-like Flash memory cards, the more likely it becomes that a real terrorist could sneak a truly dangerous device onboard.
They mention that the cells can be refilled, but no mention where or how. Somehow I don't think people will want to buy 6 or 8 hours of extra battery time if they have to pay $200 bucks for it.
They also mention that the infrastructure's not there yet to support these cells. I'm guessing that means there are no places that will refill them.
So if you desperately need that much battery power, pay the price each time until refill stations come along. yay.
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
It claims they will run about $200. That is very cheap considering some of the best batteries we have now cost just about the same. Fuels cells have also looked to be rather expensive everywhere I've seen them. Check out http://wwww.fuelcellstore.com for example. Why are these fuel cells on places like fuelcellstore.com so expensive and the ones they plan on putting out as laptop power devices fairly cheap? I understand that economics has partly to do with it since the laptop fuel cells will be sold in much larger quantities. I still wonder and would love to hear someone who knows anything about this.
Question everything.
I've heard rumors of fuel cells coming to market for quite some time now. Most of the fuel cell research seemed to be related to cars, though.
I think the tech sector is definately a more appropriate audience for fuel cells, the market is much more used to accepting new technologies and living with a short product life span.
It is good that the problems and shortcomings of fuel cells can be uncovered by the tech market before the auto industry adopts them. It'd be a shame to have a car that you just paid $20,000 for break down after a couple years!
That the manufacturers will pull an 'Ink Jet Cartridge' here and make it so that these things are not (easily) refillable? Plan on having to buy these only from the manufacturer, at a ridiculously inflated price. The whole Ink Jet cartridge BS is the main reason I stepped up and bought a laser printer for home use.
Well, hopefully some company that will make easily refillable generic batteries that can go in the laptop. Sure, they can DRM the refillable cartrdiges, but would they DRM the whole battery? I suppose they could, but at what cost?
Printers are sold at a near loss (or actual loss) so they can make money on the cartridges, and thus the DRM. Because of that, they feel they can make shitty printers that are low quality. How much do you complain when you have to junk a $50 printer?
Laptops on the other hand tend to be very expensive and people are going to get fidgety if their $2000 laptop craps out because the battery DRM has failed.
Correct me if I am wrong but do not fuel cells not handle heat very well?
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Something I found of interesting on the japan version of the Toshiba website: World's First Small Form Factor Direct Methanol Fuel Cell for Portable PCs... this was a press release from March 5, 2003
It says that the current prototype can operate for approximately five hours on 50cc of high concentration methanol with an average 12 watts of output with a max of 20 watts. They have the aim of product commercialization within 2004.
They mention that part of the problem is that the optimum methanol/water ratio is 3% to 6%, but they overcame this by using waste water to dilute the incoming methanol solution... cool.
So, yeah, it is vaporware, but is a cool concept... if you don't have the ability to do fuel cell with your current laptop, you could get a docking station version.
I'm curious though... what is the average usage of a laptop... something tells me 12 watts is not enough.
Picture of one for laptops
from
Fuelcell.org
you may now mod this as redundant.
Just add some fresh cells when you get in a bind and it works without having to ante up $200 for an overpriced rechargeable from the manufacturer.
I usually use it plugged into the wall, but like to have the option of using the batteries.
You'd have to buy a lot of alkalines to offset the rechargeable's cost that never lasts as long as they boast.
I'm curious though... what is the average usage of a laptop... something tells me 12 watts is not enough.
The power supply to my lame 486 laptop is rated at 20watts. I don't know it's actual consumption, but keep in mind that that it has to charge the onboard battery as well. The same laptop has roughly 15 AA sized cells. I believe each cell was rated for 600ma, so roughly 10.8 watt to 13.5 watt depending on whether they were 1.2v or 1.5v.
12 watts sounds reasonable to me.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
I used to travel continuously for my business purposes; if I'm on a plane, that's some of the very rare stable peace and quiet that I can find for my favorite diversions, namely reading or programming. Every time some marketing geek starts bandying around the idea that their new battery technology will allow us to watch a full movie on a single charge, I have to wonder at people's stupidity.
If that's the whole reason you brought a laptop on that plane, you would be much better served to pick up a cheap portable DVD player, and keep your laptop in its case, or rediscover what people used to do before laptops: read. When you pull out that DVD player, or your laptop, for that matter, pretty soon the people next to you start getting nosy. Then they start getting intrusive, because you have presented them with a topic of discussion. Pretty soon, you're having conversations, and that treasured, sacred peace and quiet is shattered with forced contact with other people on the plane.
Call me a snob, but my first response to someone on a plane talking to me is to start methodically weighing the legal consequences of chucking them out the nearest emergency exit.
Weapons of Mass Analysis
http://hondacorporate.com/fcx/index.html
Laptops are nice, but I'm not choking to death on laptop fumes. Auto's first.
the things the size of a bic are not the fuel cells themselves but rather just the fuel, I'm pretty sure the actual fuel cell, is at least the size of a normal battery, as far why not make the fuel packs bigger, prob has to do with a number of things such as space, cost, and the fact that people like the idea of these things being that small, or may have something to do with air ports not allowing over a set amount of flammable liquid, (basically anything larger then a bic)
Surely somebody could just market a refiller like you get refiller aerosol cans for reusable lighters? 500ml can with nozzle that pokes into the fuel cell, give it a shot, and you're refueled?
Ok so we know that the big fuel cells companies will try to sit on top of this like homer_ca says, insist their brand can't be mixed. but surely somebody is likely to come out with the Taiwanese / Chinese made generic refillable version, hack the technology?
Not an engineer, so can somebody let me know if this is feasible or if I am missing a technical limitation here?
1) Keep your rechargeable battery, and like everyone else, keep a fuel cell or two on hand for the times where you need them.
2) The hand tools isn't anywhere near as big a market as handhelds will be for those. Rather than having to change batteries every few days (or charge it every day), I would -much- prefer a fuel cell battery that should power the thing for a looong time! (not sure how long a laptop would last on a couple AA batteries but 10hrs for a laptop must be darn sweet for a handheld!)
BTW, by handheld I mean just that. Handheld. Can be a PDA, a phone, a Gameboy or whatever else...
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Would a laptop covered with solar cells on its top be able to recharge its batteries, say, for an extra 2 or 3 hours ?
It's a pity there isn't much fundamental research on improving the efficiency of solar cells : the market is huge !