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Canon's Fuel Cell May Drive Portable Gear

Posted by samzenpus on from the green-laptop dept.

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."

9 of 197 comments (clear)

  1. Mystery Cartridge! by Cruithne · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I love the extremely scientific description of the mystery cartridge that has no toxic byproducts.. especially after taking half of the article to describe how the competition is less "green" in great detail!

  2. so where by fredistheking · · Score: 3, Insightful

    so where do they get the electricity to refine the hydrogen?

    1. Re:so where by PsiPsiStar · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Theoretically, they could get it from nuclear power or from wind power, which is beginning to mature. A machine that runs on gas can only run on gas. A machine that runs on electricity can effectively run on coal, wind, nuclear, or any number of sources produced in a central location and sold across the grid in a market based fashion that helps keep the cost down.

      So anything that helps products run on electricity more effectively is a good thing. Of course, Canon's stuff wasn't running on gasoline to begin with

      I haven't been able to access TFA though.

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    2. Re:so where by FireFury03 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Theoretically, they could get it from nuclear power or from wind power

      Infact, wind power should be better suited to hydrogen generation than generation of grid electricity. Generating electricity for the grid has problems since wind is unpredictable so you can't have your wind farms match the current demand on the grid. For hydrogen generation this doesn't matter since you can just adjust the amount of hydrogen you generate depending on how much electricity your wind farm is generating and then _store_ the excess hydrogen, which you can then use during the periods when you don't have enough wind to meet demand directly. Storing hydrogen is much less of a problem than storing electricity.

      Maybe this is what the future holds for us - use predictable power generation systems (fisson, hydro, tide, fusion and orbital solar arrays) for electricity generation and less predictable (e.g. wind) for hydrogen generation, where the hydrogen can be used in cars and most things that currently contain high capacity batteries such as laptops.

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      http://blog.nexusuk.org
  3. Re:fossil fuels for now by weighn · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Most fuel cells technology derives hydrogen from methanol fuel. Canon's prototype uses hydrogen as the fuel. The coolness about these things will be more power from a cell the size of a standard battery and you will recharge them in a few seconds.

    It can be hard to hear over the clipped-signal of the marketing hype - but I think the jury is still out on the "environmentally friendly" claims.

    --
    Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
  4. Re:Great by benjamindees · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yeah well I'd like for my grandchildren not to have to deal with cleaning up all the disposable toxic batteries that you want to use instead.

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    "I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
  5. Not again by squoozer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Here we go again. Someone will say that hydrogen is a power source and then a bunch of pedants will jump on him / her claiming that it's not a power sources it's a power store as it uses more energy to create it. Then there will be an argument over what constitutes a power source. Does that about sum up the discussion?

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  6. Re:A letter from the hydrogen-powered future by Kelvie · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Right now, anyway, the whole point of hydrogen fuel cells is not to see hydrogen as a PRODUCER of energy; the current goal is to use fuel cells as a hydrogen transport mechanism. The rationale behind this is simple; the only byproducts (at least with proton-exchange membrane fuel stacks) are water and heat, which is not a pollutant. The manufacture of hydrogen will produce pollutants, however the vehicle (or in this case, the electronic device) has far from an ideal methods to deal with these pollutants compared to say a power plant. Fuel cells have other uses, also, e.g. they charge instantly. The point of fuel cells is to avoid pollutants at the consumer level, and to bring the majority of it to the industrial level, where it may be dealt with in a much more socially responsible way (compared to your tailpipe). This is the current goal with fuel cells, whether or not this will be a viable solution for our dependency on fossil fuels is limited to the minds of the engineers in the R+D sector.

  7. Re:fossil fuels for now by JonathanR · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Most hydrogen generated today comes from steam reformed methane (natural gas). Not much difference, since most methanol is created from natural gas too.

    Sure, you can use hydrolysis, but you can also charge a LiPo or other type of battery.