Japanese Start-up Plans Hydrogen Fuel Cell For 2014

angry tapir writes "A Japanese start-up says it has finessed a technology that could finally make consumer-grade fuel cells a reality. If successful, the company, Aquafairy, would create a business where many much larger companies have failed. Prototypes of the company's hydrogen fuel cell technology are on show this week at the Ceatec exhibition in Japan where the company's president, Mike Aizawa, said he hopes the first products will be on sale next year."

Comments

Doomed to failure

[Guspaz]

Their specs indicate lower specific energy than lithium ion batteries, combined with a huge base unit. The end result is that you're going to end up with something that is heavier and bulkier than existing USB lithium ion batteries, making it just another gimmick.

I could see them having some success in much larger scale applications, though (like three orders of magnitude).

Re:...Aisle 7, right next to the plutonium.

[necro81]

You must have glossed over the part of the article where it states that the hydrogen fuel is not stored as a high-pressure gas:

the company has developed a treatment that turns it into a sold form that's safe to handle but is still useful as a fuel

Details aren't mentioned in the article, but there have been a variety of groups demonstrating various powders and matrices that absorb the gaseous hydrogen and release it later (in response to gentle heating, a drop in vapor pressure, etc.), a so-called hydrogen sponge.

Already exists

[SwedishPenguin]

A Swedish company already did this, they call it "myFC" and it's powered by a "puck" of hydrogen. Wether it's useful, I have no idea.
http://www.kth.se/en/forskning/pa-djupet/ladda-mobilen-med-vatten-1.381551
http://powertrekk.com/

Re:Hi, drogen!

[LoRdTAW]

Most commercial hydrogen is produced by steam reforming natural gas, not electrolysis.

They key to a hydrogen economy (Ugh, buzzword/phrase) isn't the production of hydrogen but its storage. 3000 PSI (20.68Mpa) cylinders aren't appealing to safety advocates or consumers and other forms of storage haven't panned out. Plus the energy needed to compress hydrogen to high pressures begins to make the overall process much less efficient. Without a method to densely store hydrogen safely, effectively and efficiently, liquid fuels (including liquefied gas) will remain the preferred choice.

Re:Cheap Hydrogen

[pixelpusher220]

Imagine developing a combustion engine while you haven't even worked out a process to drill or refine oil for the engine.

You mean like Mr. Diesel did with his engine? It was demoed running on peanut oil in 1901 I think.

Hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the universe. Using the state transition of water/electrolysis to store and release energy means that we have a completely renewable source of hydrogen. 'Using' the fuel simply puts it back into the feedstock state.

Couple that with the fact that more energy hits the earth as sunlight in an 'hour' than we currently use across the entire planet in an entire year and you have all the energy you need to split water into hydrogen.