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Samsung Working On Fuel-Cell Powered Cell Phones
An anonymous reader writes "BusinessWeek reports that Samsung plans to build prototype phones that will be powered by Direct Methanol Fuel Cells." From the article: "The deal also marks a huge vote of confidence in a little-known company. MTI Micro, which had sales of $8 million in 2005, is one of a handful of outfits seeking to bring hydrogen-based fuel-cell technology into more common use. Its Mobion fuel cells have already appeared in industrial handhelds from companies like Intermec, a unit of Unova, and have drawn the attention of military contractors developing devices that soldiers will use in the field. Under the deal, which lasts through the end of the second quarter of 2007, the two companies will jointly research the use of methanol-based fuel-cell technologies for use in cell phones. Any patents that come as the result of the research will be assigned to MTI."
If your using your tech devices whilst in a sunny tanning situation, wouldn't it make more sense to have a solar charging unit handy and run all day without even needing a refill?
Let the alcohol refresh you without wasting it on your laptop.
liqbase
People might just do that if the fuel cells have a lifespan of a year.
Right.
Actually, this is the gillette principle.
Pure repeat sales, they would love to get us to do this, but your absolutely right.
I would use a fuel cell if:
1) I can purchase a 20 gallon barrel for pence and fill up at home.
2) each refill will last much longer than current tech.
liqbase
Now I may be wrong about this, however it is mine understanding that hydrogen used for cells and so forth is produced by applying an electrical charge to water, this causes the hydrogen and oxygen to divide and the gas is gathered and used in cells. At the moment this is done with wind powered or solar generators but when this comes a mass used device the "clean" and "conservative" methods will be tossed out the window(solar and wind can't possibly provide enough power) and replaced by regular power plants, so all in all you really will not have any power conservation.
So people are going to give up being able to recharge their cell phone batteries for free for the ultra-convienence of having to go to the store to buy new fuel cells for their phones
Yeah, I too kinda wonder about the logic behind such a product.
I also have to wonder just how much more eco-friendly this would prove over the life of a phone - For a ballpark calculation, people replace their phones every two years and current phones need charging every two to three days. If this cell lasts twice as long that means it will eat between 120 and 180 cells over the life of the phone. Does one Li-ion battery really cause that much damage to the environment that 180 PEMs+tank represents an improvement???
For bigger things, like laptops, I can see the use of fuel cells as an auxilliary power source (though not replacing batteries outright). But for a cell phone, they last three days, not three hours, per charge. Even then, though, I have to wonder just how popular they would prove themselves.
Mostly, I see fuel cells as useful in places where we already use fluids (ie, gasoline) as a source of power, such as cars and generators. I also see a possible secondary market in places we currently use mostly non-rechargeable batteries, such as flashlights and radios. But targetting cell-phones, laptops, or any other device that already uses rechargeables seems like a sure way to make sure fuel cells never become popular.
Batteries have always been nasty, from the very first lead-acid batteries on to today.
Lithium-ion batteries, for instance, have the habit of exploding when charged. It took a lot of engineering and electronics wrapped around the charging of lithium-ion batteries to make them safe for consumer use.
But when's the last time you heard about a lithium-ion battery exploding on someone? I haven't heard about it in a while. And it's been even longer since I've heard about it when it wasn't the person's fault.
There are "questions to be answered", sure, but you sort of act like this is news. I could equally write a "questions to be answered" post about automobiles, starting with the impossibility of storing gasoline correctly. There are people who can answer those questions called "engineers", and while I wouldn't jump on the first iteration of the technology, the battery field has a pretty good track record overall. If it comes out for consumer use, it'll almost certainly be very safe after six months on the market.
Ok, so if I read TFA correctly, what we're really talking about here amounts to a battery with a different type of chemistry and slightly more complex internal structure. I don't see a promise of easy home re-use and re-charge necessarily in the TFA. In fact, it indicates the potential market for "...as many as 80 million fuel-cell cartridges" by 2012.
Seems to me, that "fuel-cell cartridges" == batteries for all intents and purposes. Given that, the issues that will need to be raised are the same as those of batteries now. Will they be made in standard sizes, or will we have to pay a premium for the model used by each manufacturer? Compare this to ink-jet printer cartridges. They all pretty much do the same thing. We are forced to buy a unique one for each manufacturer and printer. They purposely make them different from each other even within the same vendor, so that small competitors cannot have the manufacturing capability to produce a full product line without huge startup costs. The result is that we pay a huge premium for the name brand or one of the few aftermarket versions, or go through hell refilling them.
Be careful here. Calling it a fuel cell doesn't mean you can carry around a bottle of ethyl alcohol and refill it yourself. It also doesn't mean you can go to the local convenience store and buy a stockpile of size AAA from one of a dozen competing companies. The business model that makes HP and Epson so much money now was copied from Gillette. Don't think for a second these guys won't try to go the same way.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
This is rediculous. Thin film batteries are just around the corner, with a solid state electrolyte, they retain no memory, charge extremely fast, are cheap, high capacity, cannot break and leak chemicals, gas, or boil, and are paper thin to boot.
A fuel-cell powered cell phone would be the perfect example of "because we can" technology. Completely pointless, with little or no practicality, doesn't really advance anything, but it's cool as hell.
... what did you expect, something profound?
I think his point was that it's a pain in the rear to carry around extra "fuel" or to make a trip to buy some, when electrical outlets are pretty ubiquitous.
It's also worth noting that these fuel cells had better standardize on their "fuel" sooner than later, cuz I don't want to have to try to pick out the right one from a rack of 70 different types. In that respect, I fear that they'll very closely resemble batteries. Only instead of AA, AAA, C, D, I'll have to pick from words that look like they came from the ingredient list of a processed food packet.
Remember, kids - if you can't pronounce it, don't eat it.
I'm sure your phone will never use as much energy as was used to create that solar collector :-)