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Sony Develops Buckyball Fuel Cell
Jonny Marx wrote to mention a post over at Digital World Tokyo detailing Sony's latest fuel cell technology, which uses Fullerenes (Buckyballs) to achieve a lot of power in a little space. From the article: "... The technology looks like a significant step in the right direction toward the development of DMFCs powerful enough to supplement or replace lithium batteries for handheld gadgets. Methanol leakage and power output have been the devilish details that have stopped DMFCs becoming widespread, along with regulations that are still being hammered out to allow methanol to be carried aboard passenger aircraft, and a methanol fuel infrastructure, i.e. being able to pick up refills at Japan's ubiquitous konbini (convenience stores) for example."
Wait a second! You tricksters!
That's not fuel! That's a fruit roll up!
[if you don't get it, at least LOAD the article]
MoM++ - A Classic Expanded - [Master of Magic 1.5]
http://mompp.sourceforge.net/
Realistically, I think they'll have to develop some kind of disposable delivery system, maybe something that looks like batteries, that you jam into your gadget and throw away when it's out of fuel (or maybe it could be refillable). Question would be, how much fuel do you need to give you, say, 15 hours of play time? Would it fit in one or two double-A size batteries, or would you need to carry around a jug of the stuff?
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This week we like Sony?
On Wikipedia.
power density of about 100 milliwatt-hours per square centimeter.
Could someone convert this to furlongs per LoC and tell me what other competing techs like today's laptop batteries have?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
This comment is the obligitary flame against Sony for its recent activities, Root-Kit, PSP, etc...
...but I've decided to cut my nose off to spite my face by boycotting Sony because of Sony BMG's recent DRM-o-rama.
Seriously, this is the Sony I once knew and loved, when it did things like this all the time. Maybe those of us boycotting the entire company because of last month's debacle should adjust things a bit?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
Does this mean in ten years my MiniDisc player will be powered by fuel cells?
really 867993
Karma schkarma
You'll probably need to hack these to keep them from messing up your equipment. Now where did I put my Scotch tape...
It's too bad that Richard Smalley, co-discoverer of the buckmeisterfullerene, died a few weeks ago. I'm sure he would have loved to finally see some of his research hitting practical consumer markets.
Rice University hasn't been the same without him. He was sort of a big deal around here.
The main problem - which is still not being addressed - is that the decepticons will just steal them for energon cubes.
..how long until they create robots powered by alcohol?
...How can they manage to DRM a buckyball?
The question is how much energy is lost by converting it to this form. If the conversion(s) from sources of energy to user-forms actually pollutes or wastes more transforming along the way then it still needs work or other alternatives should be explored. Practically all the energy (excluding nuclear and gravity) we use originates from the Sun (oil used to be plants, topsoil is mostly plant material...) itself so the ideal solution considering thermodynamics would be to have the form to be a minimal number of transformations from the source as possible.
Shh.
I love flying Electric RC stuff. One of the major considerations for an RC power system is weight, which is why NIcd is going out, and LiPo is all the rage now.
:)
The article was really scant on details, does anyone know approximately what the weight of this device will be? Will fuel cells be able to replace typical LiPo batteries in RC aircraft?
PS, typing this live from my Karaoke show, stop by and say hi
I thought I once heard that buckyball molecules were extremely hazardous to humans (they would slice/punch holes in cells due to their hardness and not easily got rid of)
And this device is supposed to be powered from methanol?
Only in Capitalist America would a device constructed of hazardous materials, fueled by a flammable substance be allowed on an airplane while strictly forbidding toe-nail clippers. (or did the ban on them end?)
What makes it even sillier is that the milliwatt-hours is not a unit of power (but rather energy), and square centimeters is not a unit of volume (but rather area). It's about as bad as trying to measure your weight in feet, or the distance from NYC to LA in pounds.
...but nah, I don't think I'll link to wikipedia.
Only in Capitalist America would a device constructed of hazardous materials, fueled by a flammable substance...
You mean like an airplane?
... on your laptop will be installed by the battery pack.
Seriously though... thini about it. Sony likes things to be nice and proprietary. If they make this work they will structure it so it is only usable in their products, they won't allow others to use their patent, and it will be at best a marginal product like memory sticks.
This space available.
Well, modern laptop battery store something around 100 watt-hour. That mean this bucky-ball fuel film should have 1000 square centimeters surface to have the same energy capacity. Into what volume this surface could be packed I have no idea, but if one layer is around 1mm it should be something about the same size and capactity as modern battery.
..but one thing you can't deny is that they innovate, unlike other notorious companies (ie. M$). Their engineers have developed some really great technologies over the years, but unfortunately, some screwballs within the company keep messing things up with excess baggage such as copy protection schemes.
It's funny how their media business has made alot of money, but it's also their media business that is handcuffing their electronics division from doing better. The executives then look at how well their media business is doing and then appoint the person in charge of it all (Howard Stringer) as CEO. So now their electronics business is even more screwed since they have a content guy in charge. So instead of content supporting their electronic sales, they have electronics supporting their content business.
Sony should get back to it's roots (no pun intended), and focus on innovative new technologies, and tell it's content and media business to stay out of it.
Efficiency is a concrete factor and being such can be measured independently with matching results, other factors such as "environment", "convenience", "safety" are sometimes much more difficult to measure.
You're right though, efficiency is usually not the primary factor in most designs.
Shh.
They're using an extremely unusual way of representing the power but lets have a stab at working out how close this is to a battery. 100milliwatts/hrs per square centimetre. Assume a device has a surface area of 4cmx5cm where the stuff could be placed, thats 20cm^2 so that's 2watt hrs. A rechargable NiMH AA is 1.2volts and can go up to 2500mah so 1.2volts * 2.5amps = 3watt hrs So this currently provides 2/3 the power of an AA in a surface area roughly the size of a battery compartment for two AA's. Not a bad start but it needs to get at least twice as efficient for it to be able to compete with lithium- cells
if one layer is around 1mm it should be something about the same size and capactity as modern battery.
Finally! All the convenience of batteries with none of the hassle of not-occasionally-blowing-up.
I didn't double-check your math or read the article (I'm a busy guy. I've got Tivo-ed episodes of Will and Grace to watch. I'm beginning to think Will might be gay.), but I hope there's room for improvement on that.
But does it come with a root-kit?
I, for one, will not be inserting any Sony products in any orifice of any computer, without significant pressure and wearing protection.
threadeds blog
"The company . . . won't say how long its going to be before the film slips into DMFCs and the DFMCs slip into products."
As soon as they can get it to phone home with the contents of your laptop.
I found much of it collected here: http://www.futurecrisis.com/ - even a DIY section for those /. try-it-yourself types
It means that if a AA battery was made out of the stuff, you would need 2 of them in a row to get 2/3 the power of one normal dry fuel cell AA battery. Not very efficient, and current technology means that this is not cheap.
It also means that even the worst laptop battery outlasts this tech by several miles.
- d
If you use the fuel cell with a non-Sony device, it explodes.
Um... no. The proper unit for measuring usefulness of a battery *is* watt hours. How much energy it can supply us with is *exactly* what we want to know.
And the area measurement would be odd if we were talking about a conventional battery, but in this case it's a buckyball *film*. Which really is quite two dimensional.
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
Of course it comes with DRM. My guess is you have to pay again every time you recharge it. Just to make sure you're not illegally using it, you'll have to pay as if you were using it 24/7.
The film is just a barrer where the reaction takes place. The power is proportional to the area and the total energy is proportional to the volume of fuel.
You can fix anything with duct tape and sticks.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6458
Carbon molecules called "buckyballs" - which hold great promise for nanotechnology - but have been shown to harm fish have been made safer by scientists.
The soccer-ball-shaped carbon nanoparticles were shown to cause brain damage in fish and kill water fleas in a study in March 2004. But now a team at Rice University in Houston, Texas, US, has come close to understanding how buckyballs - more formally known as fullerenes - kill cells and how their toxicity can be lowered in human cells.
Although the toxic nature of the carbon-60 nanoparticles may be useful in medicine, for example in fighting cancer, there are concerns that their potentially widespread use in fuel cells, drug delivery and cosmetics could mean they find their way into the environment, and so into animals and humans.
"There are a couple of different manufacturers that will, and are, mass producing fullerenes," says Christie Sayes, one of the team. "They could make it into consumer based products: fuel cells and batteries or make-up," she says.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
It's just you. Last time I checked, airline companies have no problems with someone carrying tax-free cask strength whiskey (60% ethanol) onto their planes - they even serve alcohol in glasses there! So a small bottle of, say, 20ccs 30% methanol used only to drip a few drops into a fuel cell would be no issue.
Finally! All the convenience of batteries with none of the hassle of not-occasionally-blowing-up.
If you're using a Lithium Ion battery already, they don't even have that advantage.
%>
lol mods have no sense of humor...
I found that funny as I was thinking myself 'liked I'd buy somethingg from sony after what's been going on recently' and then was just waiting for a rootkit/drm comment...
Whoever modded you troll needs permission from mom to leave his basement apparently.
If you didn't notice, the woman looks far too much like that air powered android that was featured a few months ago, did this happen by chance? I think not. Maybe the makers of the 'real AI' teamed up with the android maker...oh dear no the end is near. We'll have advanced technology coming out of our ears, but the androids will have a strange obsession with getting us to click on them...the end is nigh...the end is nigh.
However, all these devices run off ethanol and kerosene, which are relatively nontoxic. Methanol is very volatile and very toxic. I wouldn't want any kind of atmosphere vented storage system for methanol kept indoors. During the oil crisis of the 70s I briefly ran my motorcycle on methanol, and it is a real pig to handle. Years of research have gone into handling gasoline, as a result of which its use in cars is pretty safe, but it was originally a very dangerous fuel indeed.
My own preference would be a system like that for LPG where you have reusable cartridges which are refilled either at the retailer using a purpose designed system, or returned to a central depot. My guess is that it will be a repeat of the ink cartridge scam^h^h^h^hmarketing opportunity, with disposable cartridges containing methanol and a small pressure bladder to force it out, sold for a price just slightly more attractive than additional lithium cells.
Pining for the fjords
Actually, the thing that scared me most was the "DMFC" before reading the article. Only thing that came to mind was some sort of Digital Millenium Fuelcell Copyright.
lol: You see no door there!
Good lord, what are we doing? Nuclear batteries would be safer than all this.
:T:R:A:N:S:
Instead of carrying a flask of flammable fluid, or many methanol modules, I can carry alkalines around always. They stay fresh for years, ready for me in case I can't make a quick swap-out of my NiMH rechargables. Plus no blindness, no death due to defects and accidents.
Is this too complex for people to think about, as they search for the One True Powermedium? Do we have a monomania blinding our judgement, that we have to live up to consumer merchandising a'la Buck Rogers and Trek?
The only fuel cell I've ever read about that I'd want in a portable device (in pocket or on wheels) is the light-metal kind; Aluminum or zinc, not hydrogen. Even the DoD seems to share my preference.
H2 fuel cells are undeniably useful in certain mostly stationary applications. But it is niche, has been niche, and could very well remain there.
It is Sony, so read the fine print.
The buckyball fuel cell comes with an EULA.
They will first install DRM rootkit software on your device before you can power your equipment.
Sony engineers can do this, but they have to outsource their DRM to a third party who steals it from open source.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
She's hot, and therefore passes my Turing Female Test.
I'd click on her any time.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Nope.
1) Not a shipping product.
2) Some other solutions LIKE theres will exist.
And for me:
3) It doesn't take distillate from yeast metabolic reaction as fuel for the cell. When I can make a decision "Beer or run the Laptop" THEN I'll have to decide exactly how EVIL Sony is. At least the laptop won't be a Sony.
"We can make scientific breakthroughs in energy production that can make all your lives easier, but I'll be damned if we can make a copy protection schema that doesn't suck."
Glad to know that soon I'll be able to use methanol biofuel to power my buggy, insecutre, DRM laden Sony products.
and their penchant to use cute women to advertise new technology..
You only have to know that it's enough power to render toy story in real time.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
you'd better ease up a bit on the coffee
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
Sounds like a better energy strategy than, say, invading Iraq.
--
make install -not war
Why depend on the current failing "disposable" infrastructure, like buying replacements at convenience stores ("bodegas" in American)? How about rechargers that draw wall power to generate methanol (CH3OH) from water (H2)) and air (CO2, O2, Ar)? Even better, how about a fuelcell powered by natural gas (CH4, C2H6, C3H8, C4H10, H2S) from existing pipes that generates methanol (and pure water)? The distributed system would sequester dangerous atmospheric carbon, reduce the packaging waste and replacement energy. Even if convenience stores are available, they too could recharge the cells themselves, recycling empty cells, or offer a machine that recharges from their storage, like BBQ propane tank refillers (or gas stations for that matter). The more we fix the old wasteful energy distribution problems as part of the package as we inevitably "switchover" to the new systems, the more likely will be the success of keeping all the gains. Convenience is the name of the game, not just new batteries.
--
make install -not war
If you use your laptop until its battery dies on the train, aircraft etc, you're screwed until you can plug it into a power socket, and leave it there an hour or two. Whereas if you have a fuel cell laptop, you pick up a disposable recharge at the airport lounge, psshht into a refueling hole, switch back on, ready to go.
Fuel is the most compact chemical energy store. That's why a car can run much further on a tank of gas than a whole bank of batteries. So a fuel cell will last longer than a battery, and you'll be able to carry a week's backup fuel supply in a small aerosol-type can. Also, because of being long-lasting, not every fuel cell need be user refillable. One-shot sealed "disposable batteries" are possible, which you either throw away or return to the vendor for recycling and money back.
Nothing about fuel cells implies lugging a 10 liter gas can from your local garage to refuel your digital camera. That's as ignorant as thinking you'd need to own an oil-well to run a car.
Fuel cells will be nothing more than a change of habit. You'll adapt and be fine.
These buckyfilm batteries still have a way to go. At 100mWh:cm^2, rolled around gaps for methanol flow, they might get 1W:cm^2, which is 3.6Mj:liter. Battery volumetric energy density about 1Mj:l, while the same (biased) source reports their own sodium borohydride offers 26.3Mj:l, (over 7x), while the more practical and directly comparable DMFCs they mention from their competitors offer about 17.3Mj:l (4.8x).
The buckyfilm offers a flexible material, which combined with tactile sensor fabrics and flexible displays will make mobile computing even more convenient. With this early effort already within 20% of the efficiency of inflexible DMFCs, we might be very close to smart clothes and upholstery, integrating computing into all common devices without transforming them into "computers". That might sound pretty dull, but "pedestrian" has come to mean both "completely ordinary" and "conveniently mobile". Fabric is one of the older technologies on which our civilization is based, and revolutionized us when we became smart. Maybe its time to do it again by returning the favor.
--
make install -not war
So lets put them next to our heads in cell phone, in our children's toys, in our cars, and maybe we can put them in electric tothbrushes while we're at it. Lithium is much less toxic, so I'll stick with those cells.
Smokers that use zippos do this sort of thing now.. So why would it be 'weird'?
So do some techs that use those butane powered soldering pencils.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"Oh my god! Slashdot hates us. Quick, pull out something techy so they will love us again"
/. bug #926803 - Why I can post.
The co-inventor of Fullerenes and Nobel Prize winner
y _funeral.shtml
/ 160
in Chemistry, Dr. Richard Smalley, rejected evolution
and championed the theory of Intelligent Design. The
following is a link containing the remarks of Dr. Hugh
Ross at Richard Smalley's memorial service:
http://www.reasons.org/about/staff/richard_smalle
The "unamed" Nobel Laureate in the following article is
Smalley:
http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives
For background on Dr. Hugh Ross see here:
http://www.reasons.org/about/staff/ross.shtml
Any time the subject of Intelligent Design comes up here
on Slashdot we are bombarded by people who insist that
Intelligent Design is only for stupid people who are
not "real" scientists. The above two are very much real
scientists and are only two of thousands of real scientists
around the world who see Intelligent Design as the most
plauseable, and scientifically correct view of humans,
the earth, and the cosmos.
Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering Kaboom!
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Great! We'll have DMFCs DRMd so as to fall under the DMCA... Plug that laptop into a wall socket -GOTO Jail!
As a power engineering student currently studying fuel cells: this is mostly because the operational characteristics of a fuel cell are almost always desciribed as cell voltage (volts) as a function of current density (mA/cm). If I recall correctly, this has something to do with the gram-cenitmeter-second system being used with the first cells.
If you want truely evil units of measurement, you should see what happens when the fuel cells' performance is integrated into chemical reactions--grams, kilomoles, kilojoules are added to the mess.
I swear, someday I'm going to move to a shack in Montana, plant some sheep, and spend the rest of my life using cubits like God intended.
I think a better option would be to carry around a tin of ethanol.
dual purpose
power up yourself AND your gadgets
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
And it occurs freely in Nature, right? So Sony can now truthfully claim that they support "Free and Open Sauce" -- right?