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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."
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!
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.
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
Christ, no one cares. Can we please stop bringing this up on every hydrogen story?
Where do you get the dinosaurs to make your oil/coal? That's just about how stupid your question is.
I plan on getting hydrogen from windmills in my backyard. I plan on getting the copper for the windmills from a mine in Mexico. I plan on getting the magnets for the windmills from China. I plan for the water for the hydrogen to fall from the sky periodically.
You can get yours out of the little plugs in your wall for all I care.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
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"
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.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
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.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
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.
http://blog.nexusuk.org