Slashdot Mirror
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."
Now I can keep talking while getting a tan, and not worry about the batteries running out. Goodbye geekdom on a cellphone, hello tanning while on a cell phone. I'll be doing the world good too - I'll be saving energy!
And when the methanol makes you go blind, you won't even have to wear sunglasses!
A Cell fueled Cell phone using the Cell processor.
That would be cool!
how long until
I have a solar charger for my mobile phone and it works just fine. I am cheap and like the thought of free energy to power the black hole of money that is my phone. I applaud the expansion of alternative energy technology into our daily lives, but wonder if this is the best application for fuel cells...
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
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.
in the toxicity stakes.
That is, the petrol (gasoline, for the North Americans) is, to a first approximation, just as toxic as methanol. When was the last time you heard of someone suffering from petrol poisoning, in any non-trivial (meaning, fixed with 5 minutes of fresh air) manner?
The reason methanol seems more dangerous is that if you contaminate beverages with it, you don't notice it's there until you've consumes a lot. Pure methanol doesn't have that problem. (On the downside, it is absorbed through the skin, so that's not good. Still, when was the last time you got petrol on your hands, in other than a trivial fashion?).
In summary, yes, it's unpleasant. But, in the opinion of this chemist, no more unpleasant that a large number of other substances that we manage to handle quite safely. Just don't drink it.
On battery density - forget it. Battery energy density is on a negative exponential decay - there's just a limit to how much energy you can have in there, and we're at something like 85% of that, IIRC. Power density is improving, but it's better life that you really want, which is energy density. Everyone I know that does reaserch into batteries (that's about 30 people over 7 labs) basically thinks that batteries are more or less as good as they get - there's maybe another 5-10% improvement in energy density, but that's about it.
There are a LOT of questions to be answered.
More than half your questions are answered by TFA. Before you start pointing out that there are too many issues for it to work, why don't you at least try to read the article. FTA:
What Soucy and MTI CEO Peng Lim envision is a world where instead of recharging your phone's battery, you'll buy disposable fuel cells that last longer than the batteries that come with cell phones today and are more eco-friendly.
There's two of your (non)issues gone right there. It's not a fire hazard, and they are more eco-friendly than current batteries. Now before you respond asking what makes it more eco-friendly, it's actually explained in the article.
There are 2 kinds of people in this world. Those that can keep their train of thought,
I was looking forward to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (10+ years from now), but didn't think much of it until I read about Honda's new hydrogen fuel cell. It puts out 100KW of power!
It's incredible to me that a fuel cell that is smaller than a common household gas generator puts out 20 times as much power.
You could power your entire neighborhood with one of these in a power outage.
Lose Weight and Feel Great with Isagenix
Hate to "burst your bubble," but methane only comprises about 7 percent of human flatus. 21 percent is hydrogen, so you'd do better to power a normal hydrogen fuel cell with it. The big daddy gas in flatus is nitrogen, because we swallow so much air, and is mostly responsible for the "pull my finger" variety of farts. Cows produce much more methane than people do because of their more efficient digestive system, most of the nitrogen and oxygen gets absorbed, leaving mostly methane and hydrogen.
... what did you expect, something profound?
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?
A common misunderstanding of the "hydrogen economy". In the idealized hydrogen economy, hydrogen is produced through thermolysis -- directly from heat, thus bypassing the (inefficient) electricity generation stage altogether. Also, since a fuel cell powered vehicle really is electric, it can readily be enabled to do power regeneration. Engines become lighter, cheaper, more efficient, and are freed from the necessity of running off of liquid hydrocarbon chains into something that can be more easily produced.
Other energy sources in a hydrogen economy include using peak solar power (you have extra energy in bright, sunny days), extra hydroelectric power in rainy times, and direct bacterial generation of hydrogen. In the former two cases, you're not starting with heat energy, so you're not losing energy to carnot cycle losses before you get the electricity for electrolysis (with best available tech, about 85% efficient).
"You see, Government is a system that is based on weapons." -- Timster
You have raised an EXCELLENT point!
TFA states that MTI has arrangements with Gillette (who owns Duracell), which "is helping MTI Micro create a retail and distribution business for a market in disposable fuel cells." They also claim the market could demand up to 80 million units annually.
I've heard plenty about fuel cell cartridges while working in the power electronics research industry, but have yet to see any prototypes until your post inspired me to search. DMFCC has a photo on their home page of their prototype fuel cell cartridges, and judging from the style of container they could be fairly interchangeable.
In the end consumers will be at the mercy of decisions made by these large corporations, so one can only hope that standards will fall into place before too long.
"Don't hate the media, become the media." -Jello Biafra