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Hitachi Shows Off A Fuel-Cell PDA
prostoalex writes "Hitachi made a PDA, powered by a fuel cell. The device runs for 5 hours, and they plan to expand the battery power to 40 hours. It weighs 700 grams, which makes it heavier than most of the models out there. The commercial production will start next year, a picture is available from MobileMag." (This earlier mention of Hitachi's work talks about how such fuel cells could be used to charge or power other things, from cellphones to laptops.)
qoute from the article:
Although it has a greater cost then that of traditional power sources, it is completely 100 precent pollution-free.
At the moment hydrogen is not environmentally friendly at all. It has te be chemically extracted from fossil fuels or electrically extracted from water. When the times comes that hydrogen is produced with truly clean energy (be it renewables or fusion) THEN is will be truly environmentally clean.
No, "one whiff" and you're certainly not blind. Methanol is only dangerous if ingested, and even then, small amounts will not cause any permanent damage. And while flammable, it is no more so than ethanol, which is allowed in airplanes by the bottle.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Hitachi made a PDA, powered by a fuel cell...they plan to expand the battery power to 40 hours.
This is incorrect. If the submitter were to take the time to read the actual article...or the editors...they would have noticed this more surprising tidbit:
While a PDA that runs for a paltry five hours and weighs over a pound isn't exactly impressive (quite the opposite, in fact), a laptop with a forty-hour battery [fuel cell] would be incredible. Not only would that solve the problem of waiting for endless charging cycles to complete, it would also resolve the issue of batteries losing their life over time (I type this on a PIII-900 Gateway that scarcely lasts an hour and half with a second battery installed).
The only issue now seems to be rechargability, as I don't believe that this is possible with a fuel cell.
In any case, this is a tremendous step forward.
-Scott
We're not talking about Oprah's perfume here. We're talking about methanol. If you DRINK it it can blind you. Getting a good lung-full of it just makes you cough like hell.
Chris Knight is my hero.
And interestingly enough, in April's issue of Wired there's an article about how battery capacity and power consumption need to be focuses in the future for American companies. I didn't expect to read about some attempts the very next on Slashdot... although granted, Hitachi is Japanese.
I'm not sure I'd like to walk with methanol in my pocket. Hell, one whiff and you're blind... not sure even if it's allowed in a plane.
Though it can be dangerous including causing retinal toxicity, ethanol comes far from blinding you with one whiff. You can read the World Health Organization's health and safety info for methanol here.
From the article " it is completely 100 precent pollution-free."". This is not completely true. It's correct that the application of hydrogen as a fuel doesn't pollute, but the creation of hydrogen does indeed require traditional energy. Besides, the degree of efficiency is not 100%. In other words - if you use 100 kj of energy to create hydrogen, you don't get 100 kj back from spending the hydrogen. So, you could say that this is actually more polluting than conventional energy sources.
Underholdning.info
The full quote I want to address is this: A fuel cell generates electricity when hydrogen from fuel such as hydrogen and methanol combines with oxygen leaving pure water as a by-product.
Excuse me, but if you're using methanol there's a Carbon atom that has to go somewhere, usually goes as CO or CO2. Although there's some struggle about CO2 being a pollutant, the fact is that you don't only produce water.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
Dihydrogen-monoxide is also a byproduct of an operating fuel cell, is it not?