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

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.

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.