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."

Comments

Energy Density

[zardo]

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.

Re:Why hydrogen? Use it for heat..

[FireFury03]

Don't underestimate the problems with storing hydrogen. It's pesky and diffuses through everything.

True, but it's still easier than storing electricity.

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)

But that suggestion is only useful for less than half of the year (depending where you live) when you actually need to heat your home. During the summer there's still quite a lot of wind which would be going to waste.

Either way, you'd need millions of windmills to replace the energy consumed daily in the form of oil.

Indeed, and I don't think anyone (apart from a few nutty greens) would suggest otherwise.

There is NO good mass volume alternative to oil in the near future, people should be planning accordingly. Unfortunately, that seems unlikely to happen.

Fission is a good alternative to fossil fuels, produces energy in a large quantity and is in many respects less polluting (if only because you seal up the waste and store it instead of pumping it into the atmosphere). Modern fission reactors are also very safe.

In the long run, fusion looks promising (especially since the politicians have now stopped arguing about where to build ITER) but still a way off
Orbital solar arrays also have a lot of potential - even more so if we get our finger out and set up a moon base since much of the structure of the satellites could be manufactured on the moon and then launched relatively inexpensively with mass drivers. This stuff isn't science fiction - it _can_ be done if the investment is made. Sadly the people in power seem to be happy to blindly burn fossil fuels until we have completely run out. I guess today's politicians are safe in the knowledge that they won't be in power when the shit hits the fan.