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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.)
Although it has a greater cost then that of traditional power sources, it is completely 100 precent pollution-free.
\Pre"cent\, n. [L. praeceptum, from praecipere to take beforehand, to instruct, teach; prae before + capere to take: cf. F. pr['e]cepte. See Pre-, and Capacious.] 1. Any commandment, instruction, or order intended as an authoritative rule of action; esp., a command respecting moral conduct; an injunction; a rule.
Yes folks, that's right! This device follows all of the 100 rules of anti-morality pollution.
may we can finally get more usage out of PDA's for war driving instead of killing the battery so quickly
"Is that a fuel-cell PDA in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me??"
A little planning goes a long way...
Looks more like a stereo! How is one supposed to carry it again? Stuck against a ear, pretending to listen to music?
http://efil.blogspot.com/
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.
-- No sig today
...But some self-proclaimed doc stole the plutonium and left me a bunch of pinball machine parts.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
The prototype weighs about 700g, twice the weight of conventional PDAs
Whoa... barely luggable, surely not pocketable.
I think it's a bit too heavy for most people. I know a lot of people that don't use it enought durin gthe day to really worry about battery life. Usually they are back home and can recharge, if they remember.
However, I'm sure there are some people who would sacrifive weight and portability for the extra battery life. Campers, explorers, hikers, skiiers, etc... Anytime you slap a GPS unit on it and head off the beaten track, you will probably appreciate the extra battery life.
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Cool but how much does it save me over than using rechargeable Double-A batteries? I just hope the fuel cells aren't something like $400 for a $300 PDA.
Wouldn't it be a better idea if they concentrated on fuel-cell powered laptops instead of PDAs? I would kill to have a laptop whose battery lasted 40hours, and was topped-up using cigarette lighter gas (butane)!
I don't see the battery manufactures jumping for about this one, if fuel cells do get sufficiently small and cheap then there'll be a few very worried companies out there.
Bob's an avid smoker.
Bob lights a cigarette while doing work on his new Hitachi PDA.
Bob...
*poof*
Bob! Dear Lord, Bob's... Bob's dead!
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
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.
Not so much a "Palm Pilot" as a "Pocket Bomb".
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
little intake funnel, exhaust pipe to get it above your head... headphones to deal with the whine... maybe a pull chord to start it up....
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
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
A fuel cell generates electricity when hydrogen from fuel such as hydrogen and methanol combines with oxygen leaving pure water as a by-product.
Awesome, you can also use it as a flask.
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
...and if they could make more stuff run on just methane, his grocery bill would pay his fuel bill.
"Dude! Was that you?"
"Nah, man, that's just my PDA..."
Seriously, though, you'd think they'd have applied this power source to cell-phones first, due to their overwhelming ubiquity and constant need for power (although they don't typically drain down as fast as a PDA with a fast processor). Ah, it's probably in the works as well, but it's more forgivable to make a PDA of the requisite size for fuel-cell technology, as opposed to making a cell-phone the size of a portable CD player.
Windows XP SP2 told me to install third-party software that prevents viruses and protects stability... I chose Ubuntu
[i] the only waste will be pure water.[/i] Yeah, a stain will go well with that big bulge in your pant's pocket!
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.
- A fuel cell is a pollution-free and highly efficient power source and it is expected to be used for automobiles and in households, although its greater cost than that of traditional power sources limits its applications at present.
This refers to using the cell, not getting the power in it I'm sure. I think making alcohol takes more power than you get burning it, does the same apply to burning in a fuel cell? Or did I accidentally smoke the wrong stuff again?Another thing I didn't get is the expected lifetime of the cell. IOW how many times can you expect to charge the sucker before the same happens to it as did to all of my cellphone batteries. If you are expected to get as much as 40 hours from a cell (which, stripping the marketing hype and suchlike, translates to roughly 20 hours, maybe) does it mean you get 95% of that after the second charge? Or after the 100th charge? Or what? Sorry for being ignorant. If you know, please enlighten me.
I sure hope they get PDAs to the point, where your battery lasts a week again (as it did in my original Palm Pilot) and hopefully it can be done in a somewhat environmentally friendly way, too. Is this the way? You tell me, please (pretty please)
Sigs for Nerds. Sigs that Matter.
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
So a power source you have to go out of your house and actually buy everytime it dies is going to be preferrable to the recharge anywhere there's an outlet current batteries?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Can you imagine the limp you would have in your walk with that thing in your pocket at all?
I think its endorsed by the Chiropractors Union,
they'd make some major money getting that limp back out of your body.
"Nimis exaltatus rex sedet in vertice - caveat ruinam!"
Finally someone has solved the huge air pollution problem posed by PDA usage.
They need to make this thing chug and hiss like some old coal fired boiler.
"Sounds like Bob is back from Cincinnati."
"Once a guy stood all day shaking bugs from his hair." A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K. Dick
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!
I think wind up technology is more impressive and practical. I own two baygen windup radios that store the energy in a coiled spring, then drive a mini generator to power the radios. They work, the concept works. I also have a small tri-power radio that is very interesting. Shirt pocket size, multiband. It has a built in solar cell which will charge internal fixed batteries (ni cads I guess, never looked at them). There's also a battery bay that holds conventional AA batteries. That's a redundant power supply. In addition, there's a small fold out crank on the side that runs a mini generator to add-to any of the solar input, a couple minutes of very easy cranking gives a long radio play time. That particular thing doesn't involve a spring like the baygens, but it could. either way it works as advertised, it's spiffy.
I think a PDA could be constructed along those lines somehow. The chemistry involved with using normal human muscles is very efficient, much more than other other fuel/power source. A similar PDA could also have an external jack for charging from a normal AC to DC wall wart or another DC source such as from your car while driving or an even larger solar panel/whatever, making it quad power.
zogger
http://www.i4u.com/article1266.html
Right now, most of the gear I carry around consists of my PDA (an old 8MB Handspring Visor, which routinely gets up to a month of use on a single pair of AAAs...) a couple of film cameras (a small "Lomo" point and shoot and a Nikon FA SLR) and when the backlight was working on my iBook, I used to carry it around all the time (and plan to do the same whenever I get a new laptop). I also enjoy cycling, especially for long periods of time (I spent a month last summer cycling around various places in Japan), so a set up like yours would be pretty cool.
Also, about your set up, how many modifications did you have to make to get the proper voltage and current? If you have a website or something with information about your gear, a link would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers. :)
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Secondly, fuel cells are nothing more than batteries. None of the proposed "fuels" are available in ample enough quantities in nature to make them attractive as fuels. The likely scenario is a standard power plant generates electricity/energy which is then used to make H2, methanol, ethanol, etc, etc. Its pollution free in the sense the pollution is removed from the mind of the consumer and shifted to larger facilities that do the polluting for you. This might have some pros (easier pollution control at large scale for example), but its important to see the entire supply chain for power. Unfortunately, it seems if most people can't see it directly they think they are doing the earth a huge favor... its this type of NIBY environmentalism that is very dangerous. The real environmental breakthru must come on the large scale power supply side, not the consumer device side... Li ion batteries are as non-polluting as fuel cells in this respect and in fact even less so than this device since they won't produce CO2/CO.
Jeff
Wouldn't it be great to have a fuel cell powered laptop, where all you have to do is pour in more methanol to get 40 hours' more runtime? Wouldn't it be great if this technology would trickle down to flashlight cells? No more noxious disposable batteries going into landfills, and no more pollution from the process of making them. Methanol is a byproduct of oil refining and other industrial processes. Using it in fuel cells would be practically pollution free, and eliminate other pollution from battery manufacture and disposal.
But wait!
This is not what's happening. In fact, you won't be able to top off your fuel cell with a bottle from the drugstore. What Toshiba, Hitachi, and others are planning, is to capitalize on the lucrative disposable battery/razorblade business model -- with disposable methanol cartridges, like the CO2 cartridges for seltzer water makers, bicycle tire inflators and BB guns. The cartridge concept for fuel cells was supposedly to get around airline regulations about open containers of flammable liquids, but the lucrative disposable battery/razorblade business model is the real reason.