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BBC Tests Pre-Commercial Toshiba Fuel Cell Laptop
nbannerman writes "Fuel cells have been talked about a lot recently, but Toshiba have finally demonstrated a working model. The BBC News website provides some interesting background on fuel cells, but does carrying a warning for the future; 'Toshiba's phase one fuel cell shows how near, but also how far, the version is from being a commercial reality.'"
Am I the only one that dosn't want to be wandering around town looking for a means to refull my notebook? The only use I can think of for these things is a flash charger for my existing battery.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
A small, plastic, brick-shaped 100 millilitre cartridge with methanol fuel that looks like an ink-jet printer cartridge
probably costs like an ink-jet printer cartridge too. But all it has to be is 'the best' and a certain class will be lining up to buy carts at $49.95 a pop, on company expense (think petrochemical and pharmaceutical industries).
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Try getting THAT through airport security.
Dear Tomoaki Arimura (pictured in the linked article), As a general rule, the tip of one's tie should come to about the edge his pants.
Off-topic of course, but I couldn't help it. Is he trying to polish his shoes with that thing, or...? Sorry, mod me down if you really need to.
Oh, fuel cells are cool. Your car wants one.
If you can't just be yourself, then be more like me, ok?
Fuel cells electrochemically convert fuel into electricity, without bothering with the awkward combustion process that dooms regular engines to inefficiency. The fuel that most currently workable fuel cells run on is hydrogen, which is a bit of a pain to store and transport. A device called a "reformer" can be used to convert methanol and water (much easier to store) into carbon dioxide and hydrogen, but reformer-based fuel cells aren't very efficient, and small models for portable electronic devices are less efficient still. "Direct methanol" fuel cells (DMFCs), on the other hand, run from un-reformed methanol. DMFCs are the things most likely to end up in your laptop or mobile phone. Learn more about fuel cells.
Meh.
In terms of volume, it is around a litre and weighs about as much as the same measure of water.
I actually thought they were a lot closer than this. From the photo, it actually looks larger than a litre, I'd say closer to 1.4. In any case, fucking huge, and nowhere near practical. They need to shrink it by more than an order of magnitude to be workable.
Oh no... it's the future.
..is that with a small adapter, you could use it to toast marshmallows at work. :-P
....marrssssshhhhhmmaaaallloooowwwsssss...huhmnhuh
huhmnnhuhhmhh
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
One of the things that jumped out at me was the thought "wow, this thing is very dependant on technology just to be safe!". From the article:
The fuel cell is loaded with sensors. When suddenly picked up and shaken, anti-tamper sensors lock down the fuel cell to avoid leaks.
As it produces heat from the reaction, internal sensors make sure that it does not overheat.
What of the odds of those various sensors failing (and you know that they will for someone, somewhere) and what kinds of damage is caused when they do?
Forget about ever taking one of thes eon an airplane. Methanol is a self oxygenating liquid, I believe, so it is very volatile.
Explain that to the airport police..."Really, it is a liquid fuel for my LAPTOP! Ow, that rubber glove doesn't help much for pain does it?"
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Able1.jp g
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The thing looks pretty big and heavy, I wonder how a similar size/weight Lithium Ion battery would stack up against it. Is the new technology really better at the moment?
This fuel cell system weighs as much and is as large as a 1 Liter bottle of water... and gives 10 hours of charge?!
...and clearly there has not been any marked for a notebook with a clunky battery- The closest thing to a laptop ever released which emphasizes battery power over weight is the Electrovaya Scribbler- I have the 300 model and can get well over 10 hours out of it!
Clearly you could have a Lithium ion battery that lasts many more (20? 30?) hours at the same size...
Maybe by the 3rd generation (and a decade from now) it will be able to compete with standerd batteries, assuming standard batteries haven't improved by then this technology might be worth a second look (which is unfortunately a possiblity, given the slow progress in battery technology)...
Working at a University helpdesk, I saw a looooot of laptops... all shapes and sizes, young and old. Battery technology has progressed a long way -- but there's only so far it can be pushed. I find the best way to have a long battery life in a modern laptop is to NOT have a giant screen. Too many companies are sticking huge screens on laptops -- adding on to weight AND power consumption. Leave the huge screens to desktops please. As for the Dell laptops having short battery life? I'm guessing they are P4 laptops (Dell's lappy's only use Intel chips) -- the processor is a main determinant in battery life. P4's are energy hogs -- Intel's Centrino is more longevity friendly (and the new Yonah chip... WOW!). AMD has some good high-efficiency chips as well. When looking for a laptop, decide what you really need -- if it's a desktop replacement, go for the huge screen and whatever you want, but if you NEED a laptop to do work on the go (i.e. you can't plug-in), choose something with a reasonably sized screen, an efficient processor, and most importantly -- a second bay for an extra battery.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
Speaking of laptops starting fires, why is it no one's talking about this:
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=2607
Why does an 11 year old have a brand new iBook anyway!!! I didn't even get a freakin' Speak'n'Spell until my 16th birthday.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
It appears increasingly unlikely that fuel cells will ever happen. Although fuel cell technology continues to improve, the improvement is very gradual. It's not clear that fuel cells are progressing faster than new battery technology, in which case the two will never converge.
I should also note that the fuel cartridge (100ml) by itself, which powers the laptop for 10 hours, is not that much smaller than a battery. Even if toshiba drastically shrank the size of the surrounding electronics, making the entire cell the same size as a battery, it still would have no advantage. You would still have to carry around extra fuel cartridges (with methanol) for additional power.
Bear in mind that you wouldn't be able to recharge the cartridge by just pouring in more methanol, or buying new fuel cartridges at a convenience store. Methanol is extremely poisonous even in very small amounts, and medically significant amounts are absorbed through the skin. Therefore the fuel cartridges will require expensive and durable equipment to prevent the leakage of any fuel whatsoever when removed from the laptop. Probably the fuel cartridges will be expensive and will have to be recycled and disposed of properly.
what is wrong with batteries?
Two words: energy density. There is no battery technology currently available or in development, that I know of, which approaches the energy density of petrochemicals or methanol, and probably of compressed hydrogen as well. So there is a lot of interest in producing a compact power source which runs on a high-density fuel, because you could increase the capacity of the computer's power source beyond what would be practical on batteries.
Right now, it seems like in laptops you have two choices: you can either get the very small ones that have decent battery life (iBooks, Sony Vaio, probably others), or you can get those huge, hot-as-Hades "tabletop" notebooks that really only have batteries to keep them from shutting down while you're carrying them from one outlet to the next. I don't think I'm the only one who would be really interested in getting my hands on a desktop replacement with good (6-8 hours real usage, by which I mean heavy HD and optical I/O, constant WLAN usage, maximum brightness screen and headphone audio use) battery life, especially if I could take it to places that don't have electricity available and "recharge" it with some sort of compressed-gas or fuel canisters. Or have a compact laptop with a smaller screen and less bells and whistles that ran for days or weeks on a single fueling. You're not going to get to either of those goals with current battery technology (unless you want to hire a sherpa to carry your spares around).
Personally I find the Toshiba thing pretty exciting. My big turn-off would be that I wouldn't want to buy a first-generation device that used some sort of strange vendor-specific refill. I've had too many bad experiences in the past where you get the first generation of something that requires a steady supply of consumable parts, and after a year or two the manufacturer stops making them, and you're SOL. I hope that in all this work that Toshiba, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Samsung and Sanyo are doing together, they've invented a standard refill for these things: when it gets to the point where the refills are either widely available from a single manufacturer or less-easily from a variety of manufacturers (who aren't directly affiliated with the maker of the principal device), then count me in.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I sort of like the idea of a crank or windup clockwork spring generator for additional electrical supply, like the MIT laptop was originally supposed to have. If it is spring and clockwork, you don't have to wind for a long time, my baygen/freeplay radios (they have flashlights, too) you can wind completely up in less than a minute, then they give 30 minutes radio. I know it wouldn't last as long with a laptop, but it would be *some* emergency power as your battery started to go. There's even a foot powered generator you could get, throw it on the floor and just a slow pumping action acts as a generator, leaving your hands free and not bothering the computer. Something like this, perhaps a bit beefier the Stepcharger
The big problem with fuel cells is that the real big reason to have a mobile laptop is travel, and there is no way airlines are going to let people get on a plane with fuel, something about explosives...
I don't know if the laptop companies are thinking about this, but I tend to travel alot by plane with my laptop, and the fuel cells are probably quite dangerous in the wrong hands.
"size, noise and weight"
The noise from the fuelcell will disappear when microfluidics are used to pump the fuel and exhaust. That will also drop the size (volume), and even the weight. Though 0.792 specific gravity methanol will weigh about 792g (1.75lbs) in the liter capacity, so the total cell will probably continue to weigh about the same. Which is a lot less than the weight of 10h in electric batteries.
A really interesting gain could come from integrating the cell reservoir with the rest of the volume of the entire notebook. Fill the spaces currently filled with air with fuel (protected of course by a tough insulating/nonflammable layer), and the overall volume of the notebook could remain about the same, especially considering the airfilled shockbarrier protecting LCDs. Clever engineering could circulate the waste heat in the fuel, much as modern car fuelpumps are cooled by the gas in the tank in which they sit. Really clever engineering could harness the waste heat to circulate the fuel not just to the heat exchangers, but also through the pump, for efficiency increase (and heat reduction).
I expect that Toshiba is already testing its microfluidics version privately. PR like the BBC review will generate excitement for even a clunky first introduction. A quiet, smaller, lighter introduction will exceed those expectations and increase sales with even better reviews.
Maybe the improvements will only come out from up Toshiba's sleeve gradually. They might patent them early, then introduce them to pump their sales curves. I don't believe they will introduce a noisy fuelcell as early as 6 months from now, so they surely have more than they're demo'ing. Which gives me more confidence that they're going to pull this one off.
Now if it will just run on sake, and give massages, Toshiba will have retaken the "Personal Computer" from the dull interpreters who have made it a boring commodity.
--
make install -not war
This is really great. Because it runs on methanol, it's going to be fairly affordable (at least for short trips to places without any electrical power and potentially very easy to refill - Methanol is also sold as "Wood Alcohol" at your local hardware store. The only real question is the concentration. Most DMFCs (Direct Methanol Fuel Cells) need the methanol to be watered down. The best that I've seen are 99.5% (it had to use a means of recycling the water produced, as the methanol feed can't be more than 70% for electrochemical reasons otherwise) and 20-30%, however in research one generally is trying for 10% at best (I've done 3 work terms of research in fuel cell technologies - as a chemist). Usually at such high concentrations the methanol starts to seep across the polymer membrane, and cutting the voltage. It's one of the big problems with DMFCs, as having to dilute the methanol means that the reservoir gets bigger and more inconvenient. So they might not be too keen to let people mix their own...
Toshiba's fuel cell news is a little old, still, it's great that they're finally getting it out and available for the public. I'm surprised though that they're using one with so many moving parts - I would think that a microfluidics approach would work too. But personally I'd love to take one apart to see how they have their membrane electrode assembly with its proton exchange membrane
The question is going to be whether, like some inkjet printers, others will be able to make cheaper versions of the refilling cartriges. After all, they're just holding methanol and water - not very dangerous, or explosive, and the flammability is fairly low - but drink it and you might go blind. Their expressed concern in the article is smoking and fuming when overheating, but unless it's 100% methanol, or the cell had a very high power output (with lots of heat being generated), I couldn't see it being a problem. Even in the lab I've never seen methanol smoke - it just boils or evaporates very quickly.
One question to those who know more about computers than me: how much power does an average laptop use? I'm curious to work out what kind of efficiency they're getting with their cells.