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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."
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.
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 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.
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 --
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
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.