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CES: Tiny Fuel Cell is Supposed to Charge a Cell Phone for Two Weeks (Video)

Posted by Roblimo on from the maybe-a-whole-bunch-of-these-could-power-your-house dept.

Many of us have plug-in external batteries of one sort to recharge our smart phones when we're away from power outlets. Or we have gigantic aftermarket batteries that make our phones so fat they barely fit in our pockets. So there is this company, Lilliputian Power Systems, that is just starting to market a tiny, butane-powered fuel cell they call the Nectar that plugs into your cell phone (or whatever) through a USB port and supposedly charges it for up to two weeks. That's a lot better than an add-on battery. It looks expensive, although the power "pods" aren't too pricey at $19.99 for two. But wait a minute: Why aren't fuel cells, not internal combustion engines, the "range extenders" in plug-in hybrid cars? A decade back, fuel cells were going to revolutionize our power delivery and consumption systems. A cell phone charger is cute, but is that really all we can get fuel cells to do?

5 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. Small print by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    *Only applicable to phones powered by Atom Chip.

    1. Re:Small print by Phasma+Felis · · Score: 4, Informative

      The actual small print: $19.99 is for the power cells. The charger that the cells and your phone plug in to doesn't even have a price listed yet, which probably means it costs hundreds. Oh, and it's also not available yet, and pre-orders are sold out.

      Slashdot fact-checking fails again. Great job, guys!

    2. Re:Small print by hawguy · · Score: 4, Informative

      And to answer the question in the article:

      "Why aren't fuel cells, not internal combustion engines, the "range extenders" in plug-in hybrid cars?

      It's because electric cars use a *lot* of power - this is the same reason electric cars don't come with solar panels on the roof so you never need to charge them - it takes a lot of energy to charge an electric car.

      Since the power cells cost $20, they must contain more than fuel, they probably include some consumable electrodes or membranes.

      The fuel cells are are rated to produce 55Wh (with 2.5W maximum draw).

      A Nissan Leaf goes 73 miles on its 24KWh battery pack - so that's 328 Watt-Hours per mile.

      It would take about 6 of these $20 power cells to power your car for one mile or $120 (though you may need 150 of these chargers in parallel to generate enough power).

      Even if you assume a 90% drop in price when scaling this up to car size, that's still $12 per mile.

      I've seen refrigerator-sized, $20,000 natural gas fuel cells for powering (and heating) your home, but if you're going to power your car from natural gas, why not just make it a hybrid that uses an natural gas powered engine instead of an electric car that has a bulky and expensive natural gas powered fuel cell?

  2. Butane by ravenscar · · Score: 4, Informative

    To answer the question of "Why aren't fuel cells, not internal combustion engines, the "range extenders" in plug-in hybrid cars?" posed in the TFS...

    In this case, the fuel cell is powered by butane. Butane is not readily available, in pure form, in large, easily transferable quantities all over the world. Gasoline, however, is. I understand that butane itself isn't rare, but the ability to get a fair quantity of it safely into my vehicle in a few minutes is.

  3. stupidly dangerous by slashmydots · · Score: 4, Informative

    I have a 1500mAh battery pack module with a full-sized USB port and a power-pin-only 5-pin USB micro cable, 4" long, in my jacket pocket at all times. So it's a reserve battery for any device and it'll charge 1 phone or 1/4 of 1 tablet or some portion of a GPS unit but so what? On the other side, it has a solar panel and a charging indicator, that's what! Take that, pocket full of unstable, flammable gas. So solar panel vs butane....yeah, I'll stick with my solution, thanks. In direct sunlight, it doesn't take real long to recharge the entire battery pack either. Yeah, I'm out of luck at night but considering I can get 21 days of idle runtime on my Samsung R640 on one charge from this reserve battery, I think I can find some sunlight after depleting it.

    I believe I heard this Nectar device exceeds $300, or so they stated at CES. Mine cost $17 and it's from Scosche, which makes decent products.