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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.
"Is that a fuel-cell PDA in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me??"
A little planning goes a long way...
...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
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.
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
I'm not sure I'd like to walk with methanol in my pocket.
People walk around with methanol lighters. Never really heard of anyone being so chicken that they can't even carry a lighter.
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
[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.
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.
one whiff and you're blind
Almost as bad is dihydrogen-monoxide, one 'whiff' of that stuff causes severe breathing problems. Did you know that many commercial foods are processed with dihydrogen-monoxide? We should boycott those as well.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Finally someone has solved the huge air pollution problem posed by PDA usage.
you could say that this is actually more polluting than conventional energy sources
More than a NiCD, Li-ion, or NiMH battery? Those systems also require that you put energy into them, and they are extremely far away from being 100% efficient.
It should be obvious to the casual observer that plugging a device directly into the wall is more energy efficient than using a portable energy storage system with a device. There is simply no such thing as 100% efficiency in any energy storage products.
The big question is how much energy you can store in the smallest space with the smallest amount of nasty chemicals. Charging efficiency is only a small part of the picture - heck, I'm confident that driving your SUV for a mile uses more energy than all the batteries I have ever used in my entire life... and then some.
In addition, the chemicals involved in traditional "batteries" are known to be very toxic. If you want to talk about polutants, look at all the cell phone batteries that are thrown away year after year.
Energy efficiency isn't the only piece of the pie when it comes to polutants. Especially when you consider the toxicity of traditional batteries.
I built most of it because of the huge hole there is in portable power generation. The most expensive item was the military surplus Solar panel kit, an aluminum book that when unfolded exposes 2 high efficency "purple" solar cells that generate 12 volts at 200ma in bright sun.. I can get almost 250ma out of them if I point it directly at the sun instead of laying flat. closed it's the size of a textbook and 1/2 inch thick. The motorola hand generator was bought at gander mountian on clearance. it's for motorola cellphones and was limited to 3 volts until you remove the NICAD batteries inside and re-solder the winding points. I now get 12V @100ma out of that also. finally I modified 2 of the cheapie bicycle light kits that have the generator for creating the electricity. they each generate ~7VAC 250ma(ok so they are altenators) so I simply recitify the voltage and use one backwards to generate about 13 volts DC. total money spent WITHOUT the Military solar panels is less than $50.00US the solar panels cost me $150.00US but were worth it due to the high output and efficency. I charge NiMh AAA and AA cells during the day off the whole thing as well as the cellphone and laptop. One of the key's though is that my battery packs are all fresh and I leave fully charged. you dont usually drain everything dry and try to recharge but I generate enough electricity during the day to replace what I use.
I could generate more if I modified a kiddie trailer to hold bigger solar panels and gear driven generator off the wheels.... but you don't want to get too ambitious to generate power... or you will end up reducing your ability to bike very far and reduce the gear load you can carry. (generating 1.2 amps at 110V will get you about 30 minutes before being wiped out.. you also want to disengage all your power generators when you are looking at a hill.. it is suprising how that extra resistance can make a difference when you are going uphill!
finally, I use a libretto because of the low power consumption with a self modified battery. the older 50C had nicad batteries which are complete crap. you must hand rebuild with li-ion or Nimh and learn to love a P-I 45Mhz processor... (Yes, Linux + blackbox + abiword + other apps are very useable on this slow of a laptop.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.