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Canon's Fuel Cell May Drive Portable Gear

RX8 writes "Canon, Inc., has taken the wraps off prototype rechargeable hydrogen fuel cells, the likes of which may one day power digital cameras, media players, and printers. Canon's demonstrated fuel cells win even more points on the environmental front: while companies such as Toshiba, Sanyo, and NEC have also been working on fuel cells (and had been expected to have developed fuel cell-driven notebook computers by now), those efforts are based on DMFC technology which derives hydrogen from methanol, producing small amounts of carbon dioxide (itself a greenhouse gas) in the process. Canon's cells obtain hydrogen from a refillable cartridge with no toxic byproducts."

4 of 197 comments (clear)

  1. broken link by benjamindees · · Score: 4, Informative
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    "I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
  2. Re:Mods are on crack - but the parent is right by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 3, Informative

    ``I love how the moderators around here are on crack. +4 Interesting? Dihydrogen monoxide is WATER.

    He has made a joke, not written an informative statement...''

    Regardless of how he meant it, water does have a much stronger greenhouse effect than CO2. See the entry in the WikiPedia article.

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    Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
  3. Re:Mystery Cartridge! by m4dm4n · · Score: 3, Informative

    And since the article linked too is gone, try this http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1040_22-5912639.html

  4. Hydrogen Vs the Dinosaurs...again by CubicleView · · Score: 3, Informative

    All these articles, about hydrogen fuel cells always lead to the same argument being posted. Ie: Hydrogen isn't a better fuel source than oil because it requires electricity to produce. To get electricity you have to burn more oil, and due to losses in the circuit you'd be better off just burning the oil in the first place. This argument is flawed (at least IMOA). Don't look at hydrogen or oil as competing fuel sources, consider them to be simply different mediums for transfer energy. With oil the circuit is Sun -> Plants->Dinosaurs->Oil, Coal, whatever. An awful lot of energy is lost in that circuit. The Oil itself requires energy to extract and refine for a start, and plants and animals are not very efficient. Anyway bottom line is, oil just represents loads of stored solar energy, which we're using faster than we're replacing. With hydrogen you can store energy from multiple sources, solar wind, nuclear, etc. As long as those sources don't release pollutants etc it's a much cleaner and faster energy transfer medium. It's not as energy dense, but it's easily more energy efficient and cost effective than growing a butt load of plants and dinosaurs and waiting for thousands of years while they turn into Oil.