Slashdot Mirror
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."
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!
so where do they get the electricity to refine the hydrogen?
As long as we're considering small quantities of C02 a 'toxic byproduct' as a greenhouse gas, I would like to point out that that all hydrogen fuel cells generate dihydrogen monoxide as their principle biproduct, which is an even worse greenhouse gas.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
He has made a joke, not written an informative statement...
In Soviet Russia the insensitive clod is YOU!
but in the future, as a hydrogen infrastructure matures, the electricity will come from some hydrogen based generator.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
As you can see, it also causes dyslexia. I'm referring to DHMO, of course, not DMHO. 100% of all dyslexics have DHMO in their diets!
Another press release about a breakthrough that (assuming we actually get it working reliably and cheaply) may possibly dubut in a high end product nobody would buy for sticker-shock reasons in Japan in three years.
Really, wake me up when it's actually in a shipping product. I'll be excited then. Until it's working in the real world, it's just vaporware.
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.
Try these instead:
Canon develops fuel cell prototypes
Canon shows prototype hydrogen fuel cell
Canon to develop fuel cells for printers, cameras
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
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.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
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?
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
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!
Japan will get them in everything before everyone else, by the time we get the replacement fuel cell in our hands the Japanese will have added cameras, out-of-fuel-crazy-frog-alert-tones, flashing lights, colourful straps and furry attachments.
Our first batch of these things will look like a grey brick with wires.
Task Mangler
``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.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
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
Seeing as Canon are involved, they'll probably contain 5ml of Hydrogen, cost half the price of the camera and be chipped to prevent unauthorized refilling.
Jolyon
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
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
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
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.
OK, folks - if you are going to obsess over CO2 emissions, here are some other CO2 producing items you should be worried about:
And not the least of all:
www.eFax.com are spammers
"Regardless of how he meant it, water does have a much stronger greenhouse effect than CO2."
In a lab, not in the troposphere. Net effect of H2O is very low. Read a little further down in the Wikipedia entry: "Water vapor in the troposphere, unlike the better-known greenhouse gases such as CO2, is essentially passive in terms of climate: the residence time for water vapor in the atmosphere is short (about a week) so perturbations to water vapor rapidly re-equilibriate. In contrast, the lifetimes of CO2, methane, etc, are long (hundreds of years) and hence perturbations remain. Thus, in response to a temperature perturbation caused by enhanced CO2, water vapor would increase, resulting in a (limited) positive feedback and higher temperatures. In response to a perturbation from enhanced water vapor, the atmosphere would re-equilibriate due to clouds causing reflective cooling and water-removing rain."
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Of course, the cartridges will not be refillable, just like their ink cartridges -- and they'll be coded with special chips that can't be modified, will tell you that you have no "fuel" left when you have a half-full cartridge, and uses .5% of the cartridges' power every boot-up to go through an "initialization" cycle.
It's the same as their current strategy of selling ink for $10,000 a liter.
If they're REALLY good, they'll make the screen that transfers the energy clog irrecoverably from time to time so they can sell you special "cleaning cartridges" (only available to dealers) or the consumer has to replace the whole printer.
Could I see some kind of comparison between the amount of CO2 emitted by these fuel cells versus other sources of CO2. Every time I read about these fuel cells on Slashdot, I see the same caveat that they emit CO2. My suspicion is that if they emit so much CO2 that they'll measurably impact the atmosphere, they'll also be unsafe to operate indoors.
Greenhouse emissions may kill us all, but I think we have to worry a lot more about the Chinese burning coal than these fuel cells.
We need to keep some perspective here. Afterall humans generate CO2, too.