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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."
You know, I made this post completely expecting it to be explained in the article, which I SWEAR I was actually going to read... but apparently they want us to trust them, as the article is blank.
Either that or they're making some eco-friendly statement, kind of like "The Day After Tomorrow"'s ".. i've never seen the air look so clean!"
i get the feeling that such unscientific articles (although i haven't read it; it's offline now) are intented to get the scientifically unenlightened but economically endowed to pump money into their company. it sounds good, buy Canon!
and those of us familiar with the laws of thermodynamics probably won't penalize them when it comes time to buy a new camera. alas.
owing to many recent less-than-science articles, it would be fun if the community could collectively evaluate articles in terms of merit/originality, placing them into single-word/phrase categories such as "lies" or "propaganda" or "dog poop" or "good stuff" or "the holy grail"...
Would the fuel cell batteries last longer than the current lithium batteries when subject to cold tempuratures?
A hydrogen cartridge wouldn't have the same energy density as an ethnol cartridge, it would have to be pressurized in a strong container, whereas ethnol can be poured into the camera. Sounds like a bad idea from the get go. When are they going to come out with a camera that is powered by the push of the button? They could put a nuclear fuel cell on the camera, but that doesn't make a very handy camera, IMO. No battery at all, now that would be marvelous.
Well, some people have their own hydrogen-generating machines. Of course, these run on electricity; see, the generation of hydrogen costs more energy than the hydrogen contains - that is, it has an EROEI (energy returned on energy invested) less than one. Whatever you're processing to make hydrogen, you have to use up energy to get the reaction happening. Even if you wanted to do this, every home in the industrialised world would need a hydrogen-generating machine that ran on electricity - the manufacturing of which would cost enormous amounts of energy and materials, even if it worked at generating energy.
In some places, hydrogen is generated in big power plants and delivered "on tap" to your home or office. This might sound dangerous, but then again, people had gas stoves once, until natural gas production peaked and the price tripled overnight. Again, you'd need to retro-fit an enormous amount of infrastructure in which to deliver the hydrogen - the laying of which would cost enormous amounts of energy and materials, even if it worked at generating energy.
In any case, we need to do something. I mean, we've got all these gadgets - the manufacturing of which cost us enormous amounts of energy and materials - and they're all powered by billions of hydrogen fuel cells - the manufacturing of which cost us enormous amounts of energy and materials. Even though the average electronic device consumes ten times its weight in fossil fuels during its manufacture, and even though the generation of hydrogen costs twice as much energy as the resulting hydrogen contains, people still bought into this sham in droves, believing that it's better for the environment.
In reality, it's made the problem more widespread because we demand more energy than ever before, and it hasn't solved anything because we haven't really found a new source of energy with which to replace fossil fuels. Made me think twice about buying that hybrid car, too.
You try telling people this was a bad idea, though. They'll look up from their plates of raw vegetables and mugs of rain water, and tell you to keep your big mouth shut.
Attack its weak point for massive damage!
Hydrogen is not a legitimate source of energy, because too much energy must be put in to separate it from other elements. Hydrogen is therefore an energy carrier or "currency." People have been led to believe that we can use hydrogen to generate new energy when, in reality, it is simply another way to transport and use energy that has been generated by other means. Hope that helps.
I didn't bother to read the article, did it mention how big a hole in an airplane this fuel cell could make? THey won't let me bring a lighter on board, and that isn't even a realistic threat!
Buggered the link up:
"Alisa Viejo" dhmo
It's simple really, this fuel cell IS eco friendly. Of course the pollution produced by the factories that provide the hydrogen is not their problem.
PR is a wonderful thing.
No France
Since you have to grow large crops of sugar-cane to produce the Methanol, and these will consume large quantities of CO2. In the end, there will be no "new" CO2 released to the atmosphere, and the greenhouse effect will stop to increase.
Methanol is a good choice for fuelling cars too, since it generates more power than gasoline, less CO2 and it's cheaper to produce. The only problem is the oxidation it produces, but this will not be a issue when we switch over to eletric cars, powered by fuel cells!
The problem with fossil combustibles, like gasoline and diesel, is the oil they come from. Since it was trapped under the ground for millions of years, the CO2 contained on it is no longer part of the planet ecosystem. When we burn it, were injecting new CO2 to the atmosphere, and that's the main cause of the greenhouse effect.
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
Now that is well stated. Why don't you and I have a personal bio-diesel revolution? We'll spread the word to all the single farmers to produce it and have it on hand, so when we're driving around we can refuel at their farms! :D
But seriously I think the point about the oil industry having the means of production and possibly wanting to be paid to build all this new infrastructure was a good point. But there are attractive facts about hydrogen fuel cells that all you haters seem to be forgetting about:
(1) Longer battery life/quicker recharge time (just replace the fuel! No hours of waiting for your laptop to be recharged)
(2) Lighter portables. What percentage of a laptop's weight is the battery again?
(3) Emissions-free (mostly) operation. OK so Lithium-ion batteries are also emissions free. But in cars, fuel cells would be an improvement in terms of the emissions department. (Note that I didn't say emissions free production of the fuel. Maybe we'll get there eventually. In the meantime, it's a step in the right direction.)
And why can't our single farmers produce bio-ethanol to fuel our portable HFC-electronics?
And for all you folks who love to point out that you can't get something for nothing; but no one's trying to say that that's what HFCs are. But let me ask you this: are lithium-ion batteries something-for-nothing? Or even more efficient? Once you've factored in how much energy was wasted producing the energy required to charge the battery, then how much was lost by the battery itself, do you really come out thinking that fuel cells are a step backwards?
And if you really want to get down to the nitty-gritty, think of all the cost of getting our power in the first place, especially if we're talking about oil. Think of the wars that have taken place (or are taking place...), the lives that have been lost. Think of the man-hours that have gone into drilling up all that oil and then think of all the pollutants that have come out of refining it. You're trying to tell me that after factoring all of that in, you're still going to say that hydrogen fuel cells aren't a good idea? They're not maybe a little more a efficient, a little less polluting? Even if we fuel them with bio-ethonal? Or hydrogen generated by 50% efficient solar panels? I know different people are saying different things. Many are just saying that they doubt it'll come out any time soon. But many many others are doubting its usefulness as a fuel altogether. I've heard a lot of doubters but I've seen no proof or numbers to justify their doubt. Show me the numbers my doubting friends, show me the numbers.
It doesn't have to be electricity...
Don't underestimate the problems with storing hydrogen. It's pesky and diffuses through everything.
There's another use of windmill power that requires no fancy conversion electronics, or fancy electrolysis setups. Run whatever horrible waveform you get out of your alternator on a stick into a big old resistor that gets hot. This is cost-effective for me (in a rural setting) to heat my home with now, versus using diesel (heating oil). Nicely enough, periods that use more heat often are much more windy.
More interesting would be an engineering comparison on the efficiencies if using windmill-heated steam versus direct hydrogen combustion. Both would be mobile, but the steam could easily drive a turbine.
Either way, you'd need millions of windmills to replace the energy consumed daily in the form of oil. It's important to keep that in perspective. There is NO good mass volume alternative to oil in the near future, people should be planning accordingly. Unfortunately, that seems unlikely to happen.
..don't panic
"technology which derives hydrogen from methanol, producing small amounts of carbon dioxide"
The methanol fuel cell produces the same amount of CO2 (or more, per volume unit) as if it was burning normal gasoline. The beauty of fuel cell here shines in comparison with (lousy) energy density, efficiency and recharge rate of a battery.
One day we may be driving metanol-fueled cars or planes since methanol is pretty easy to make from coal. When that happens, the platinum-group metals used in fuel cells will not be cheaper than today - new industry uses of paladium and platinum are found every day but there is only very little to go around. Shortage of rhodium, palladium and platinum can be technologicaly much bigger problem than lack of fossil fuels. So my guess is that the new methanol motor will have some kind of good old internal combustion engine in it again.
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
I'm in no way opposed to fuel cells - in fact a distant cousin more or less invented the modern fuel cell - but I have considerable experience of pressurised hydrogen and believe me, it is a pig to contain and a pig to manage. Metal hydrides have consistently failed to live up to expectations for hydrogen storage. The advantage of hydrogen is that leaks indoors are relatively safe compared to propane or butane, and unlike methanol it is not toxic. The other advantage, that no CO2 is produced, is lessened because the oil industry's proposals for making the hydrogen result in a lot of CO2 at point of manufacture. The system may be overall carbon neutral, but so are the biofuels.
I don't doubt that in the long term we will come up with a better localised storage/generation technology. I just doubt it will take over in my lifetime.
Pining for the fjords
"you will recharge them in a few seconds."
Well you are not really recharging them you are refilling them like the gas tank in your car or the Propane tank that your grill uses. My question is just how useful this will be. Where will I get these magic cartridges and how much will they cost? It only takes a few cents of electric to recharge my notebook and I can find a plug pretty much anywhere. What about on airplanes? Can I carry these cartridges on a plane? Seems like a very expensive replacement for batteries to me.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Coal is the dirtiest fuel around. It contains significant quantities of nuclear materials. I'm sure making methanol from it is cleaner than burning it, but you still have the problem that you're releasing CO2 that has been in the ground for however long (thousands to millions of years) while using biofuel doesn't release any new CO2 into the atmosphere since you're taking it OUT of the atmosphere in the process of growing the crop. Ultimately I think we'll be seeing more biofuel, because it's getting cheaper to make all the time. It has another benefit, which is that you don't have to dig up the ground. On the other hand, agriculture has done more damage to the planet (at least, the part we're interested in) than anything else, ever. Ultimately I think the solution is going to have to either be solar or nuclear. Using a combination of fission, fission breeder, and fusion reactors could reduce the waste to nearly nothing...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"