Posted by
ryuzaki0
on from the coming-soon-to-your-lap dept.
funkman writes "Here is an article on CNN about the new Electrofuel PowerPad battery from IBM. It can runs an IBM ThinkPad 560 Pentium MMX-233 notebook for 15 hours. But the battery is not for sale yet. Finally, no more carrying multiple batteries. "
The company is called Electrofuel, they're a Canadian company with as far as I know, they have no financial connection to IBM. IBM is merely one of the laptop brands they support. Check out their site, lots of good info.
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Open mind, insert foot.
No, the battery lifetime will be the same
by
Jerky+McNaughty
·
· Score: 3
Sure, the batteries hold more juice, but now everyone will just produce laptops with even more ridiculous hardware than ever before. 15" screens, DVD drives, 256 MB of RAM,... Call me cynical, but it's just like bloated software: We have 500 MHz machines which run about the same speed with today's software as my 486 ran years ago with that software---and I still accomplish the same tasks. Heh.
Although this is good news, I don't know if it really warrents the term "breakthrough".
Do the math. The standard battery got 3:04, or 184 minutes. The new battery got 15:01, or 901 minutes. What really matters though, is not the difference in run time, but the difference in run time per unit mass. The standard battery was only 0.6625 lbs, so a battery made from hooking 2.2 lbs worth of standard batteries together should be expected to run for 184*2.2/0.6625 = 611 minutes, or 10:11, compared to 15:01. So this is a 47% improvement.
Not bad, but I don't know how they can justify the statement that they have "more than twice the energy density" just by looking at these numbers.
Of course, these devices need to prove themselves on many other fronts before they become practical. Cost, long term reliability, charging times, and malfunction possibilities all need to be considered before endorsing a technology such as this.
I'm no Ph.D in anything, but wouldn't a 15hour laptop battery have the energy density of a good sized explosive device? How long until we hear of a laptop exploding? I know there are warnings on some batteries telling of the risks of overcharging today. I can't imagine the risks that a 15hr battery would bring along with it. My two hour life laptop battery is rated 7.5 amp/hours, for a 15hour, that would be 50+ amp/hours?
Honestly, I'd rather have a backpack'able battery. I carry my laptop in a carrier in a backpack already, there's room for a car-battery..
Would be nice to have. But I'd rather not risk having an explosive charge sitting next to my joy department.
Well I never tried running it dry, but my battery meter has never read more than 3:30, even after charging for days&days. one of the new powerbooks, mind you.
While I love the new pbs, the price of the system you listed is a bit high. For my money ($2249 educational) I got a 333 mhz, 4gb, 64 mb. I added an extra 128 mb for $99. DVD's just not worth the extra money, afaic, and if I change my mind I can just get the vst drive later.
Re:Fuel for the fuel cells
by
Jack_Frost
·
· Score: 2
Fuel Cells can in fact run on many different hydrocarbon based fuels, from gasoline to pure alcohol (of any variety). The mechanism is the same in any case. The fuel acts as a Hydrogen donator, and the free hydrogens then drive the fuel cells along with oxygen from the air. The technology centers around diffusion of ions through a semipermeable insulating membrane, usually ceramic or plastic. Hydrogen gas is one one side of the membrane and oxygen gas (plain old air really but the oxygen does the work) is on the other. The hydrogens are stripped of their electron on one side of the membrane. The electrons flow to the other side of the cell (think negative to positive in battery terms) through an external circuit (be it laptop, cell phone, pager, etc) and the hydrogen diffuses through the membrane to form water with the freely available oxygen, this closes the circuit and satisfies thermodynamics, making the whole thing work.
Ideally hydrogen and oxygen would be the only two fuel components needed, but we of course do not live in an ideal world. Using pure oxygen does not offer enough of performance benefit to offset the tremendous costs of air liquefaction to obtain pure oxygen. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, and it surrounds us in the form of water, but this hydrogen has been sequestered by oxygen. Obtaining pure hydrogen from water using electrolosis uses a great deal of energy, making it very expensive. NASA pays about $1.05 per pound of hydrogen, versus about $0.13 per pound for gasoline at my local Exxon. For this reason most commercial fuel cells use a reformer to process any number of hydrocarbon or alcohol based fuels into usable hydrogen. Hence methanol, ethanol, methane, etc. The reformation process decreases the efficeincy of the cell somewhat, but they are still much more efficient then chemical batteries.
Fuel cells are well over 100 years old, but until recently the manufacturing technology did not exist to make them really useful. It's basically a plumbing problem. To maximize power output per volume you need to create a large surface area for diffusion. This is usually accomplished by making numerous folds in the exchange membrane. However this makes it more difficult to pipe in hyrdogen and oxygen to where they are needed. The chemistry of the devices is well understood, and it's largely a manufacturing problem now.
The July '99 issue of Scientific American had a special section devoted to fuel cells, and features articles discussing the use of cells in portable items such as phones as well as residential and commerical scale cells for homes and offices.
Nice, but it's no revolution...
by
starman97
·
· Score: 2
Bigger batteries usually have better energy density due to less packaging per unit volume.
-- Starman97@Gmail.com (bring it on spammers)
Yeah, I know it's a 'Me, too!' post...
by
Raetsel
·
· Score: 2
Ditto on those fuel cells. I was quite happy to hear about the ~80 deg F units that were demonstrated as a proof of concept device -- what? about a year ago?
IIRC, the researchers developing it were trying to run your cell phone all month on an insert pack of methanol... or was it a week...
The important point was, for the volume the fuel cell occupied, the energy density wasn't that great, but it was enough to run a phone (about 1 watt or so). Being that heat is more of an enemy in a laptop than a phone, I'd worry about the necessity of additional cooling measures. (Can't just replace the battery in your existing laptop) The recharge times are incredible, though!
One question: If these things run on methanol (alcohol), will you have to be over 21 to purchase fuel for your laptop?;-P
(Yes, I've thought of denatured alcohol! Sheesh!)
--
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
The problem isn't power, it's power architecture
by
Mr.+Protocol
·
· Score: 2
I got an object lesson in what's really going on here when I bought an Apple Newton 2100. Now, this final Newton sure won't replace a laptop for everyone, but it did for me: email, Web surfing, word processing, spreadsheets, the works, all in something the size of a smallish trade paperback, and powered from a standard-sized LiIon battery pack that can run the Newton for between 10 and 24 hours.
The Newton pulled this off by re-examining the architecture of a portable platform. If you make low power consumption a primary driver, instead of packing in the exact same family of peripherals that you use in a desktop platform which has (relatively) infinite power available, you get a machine which doesn't look a whole lot like today's laptops - but which also doesn't require 2.2 pounds of battery to run for 15 hours, either. The Newton 2100 has a 163 MHz processor, too, not one of those 12MHz wimpy things the other handhelds have. But this 163 MHz ARM RISC processor was designed from the ground up to use as little power as possible. The result is dramatic. It's fast when it needs to be, and the rest of the time it eats almost no power at all. Compare this to what an x86 or Pentium uses - even a "low-power" model.
Slashdot Mirror
The company is called Electrofuel, they're a Canadian company with as far as I know, they have no financial connection to IBM. IBM is merely one of the laptop brands they support. Check out their site, lots of good info.
----
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Sure, the batteries hold more juice, but now everyone will just produce laptops with even more ridiculous hardware than ever before. 15" screens, DVD drives, 256 MB of RAM, ... Call me cynical, but it's just like bloated software: We have 500 MHz machines which run about the same speed with today's software as my 486 ran years ago with that software---and I still accomplish the same tasks. Heh.
Although this is good news, I don't know if it really warrents the term "breakthrough".
Do the math. The standard battery got 3:04, or 184 minutes. The new battery got 15:01, or 901 minutes. What really matters though, is not the difference in run time, but the difference in run time per unit mass. The standard battery was only 0.6625 lbs, so a battery made from hooking 2.2 lbs worth of standard batteries together should be expected to run for 184*2.2/0.6625 = 611 minutes, or 10:11, compared to 15:01. So this is a 47% improvement.
Not bad, but I don't know how they can justify the statement that they have "more than twice the energy density" just by looking at these numbers.
Of course, these devices need to prove themselves on many other fronts before they become practical. Cost, long term reliability, charging times, and malfunction possibilities all need to be considered before endorsing a technology such as this.
I'm no Ph.D in anything, but wouldn't a 15hour laptop battery have the energy density of a good sized explosive device? How long until we hear of a laptop exploding? I know there are warnings on some batteries telling of the risks of overcharging today. I can't imagine the risks that a 15hr battery would bring along with it. My two hour life laptop battery is rated 7.5 amp/hours, for a 15hour, that would be 50+ amp/hours?
Honestly, I'd rather have a backpack'able battery. I carry my laptop in a carrier in a backpack already, there's room for a car-battery..
Would be nice to have. But I'd rather not risk having an explosive charge sitting next to my joy department.
-rd
Well I never tried running it dry, but my battery meter has never read more than 3:30, even after charging for days&days. one of the new powerbooks, mind you.
rooooar
While I love the new pbs, the price of the system you listed is a bit high. For my money ($2249 educational) I got a 333 mhz, 4gb, 64 mb. I added an extra 128 mb for $99. DVD's just not worth the extra money, afaic, and if I change my mind I can just get the vst drive later.
rooooar
That was Compaq that patented that, not IBM.
rooooar
Fuel Cells can in fact run on many different hydrocarbon based fuels, from gasoline to pure alcohol (of any variety). The mechanism is the same in any case. The fuel acts as a Hydrogen donator, and the free hydrogens then drive the fuel cells along with oxygen from the air. The technology centers around diffusion of ions through a semipermeable insulating membrane, usually ceramic or plastic. Hydrogen gas is one one side of the membrane and oxygen gas (plain old air really but the oxygen does the work) is on the other. The hydrogens are stripped of their electron on one side of the membrane. The electrons flow to the other side of the cell (think negative to positive in battery terms) through an external circuit (be it laptop, cell phone, pager, etc) and the hydrogen diffuses through the membrane to form water with the freely available oxygen, this closes the circuit and satisfies thermodynamics, making the whole thing work.
Ideally hydrogen and oxygen would be the only two fuel components needed, but we of course do not live in an ideal world. Using pure oxygen does not offer enough of performance benefit to offset the tremendous costs of air liquefaction to obtain pure oxygen. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, and it surrounds us in the form of water, but this hydrogen has been sequestered by oxygen. Obtaining pure hydrogen from water using electrolosis uses a great deal of energy, making it very expensive. NASA pays about $1.05 per pound of hydrogen, versus about $0.13 per pound for gasoline at my local Exxon. For this reason most commercial fuel cells use a reformer to process any number of hydrocarbon or alcohol based fuels into usable hydrogen. Hence methanol, ethanol, methane, etc. The reformation process decreases the efficeincy of the cell somewhat, but they are still much more efficient then chemical batteries.
Fuel cells are well over 100 years old, but until recently the manufacturing technology did not exist to make them really useful. It's basically a plumbing problem. To maximize power output per volume you need to create a large surface area for diffusion. This is usually accomplished by making numerous folds in the exchange membrane. However this makes it more difficult to pipe in hyrdogen and oxygen to where they are needed. The chemistry of the devices is well understood, and it's largely a manufacturing problem now.
The July '99 issue of Scientific American had a special section devoted to fuel cells, and features articles discussing the use of cells in portable items such as phones as well as residential and commerical scale cells for homes and offices.
By my calculations...
Thinkpad internal 10oz battery gets 17.3 minutes/oz
Powerpad 35oz battery gets 25 min/oz
Bigger batteries usually have better energy density due to less packaging per unit volume.
Starman97@Gmail.com (bring it on spammers)
IIRC, the researchers developing it were trying to run your cell phone all month on an insert pack of methanol... or was it a week...
The important point was, for the volume the fuel cell occupied, the energy density wasn't that great, but it was enough to run a phone (about 1 watt or so). Being that heat is more of an enemy in a laptop than a phone, I'd worry about the necessity of additional cooling measures. (Can't just replace the battery in your existing laptop) The recharge times are incredible, though!
One question: If these things run on methanol (alcohol), will you have to be over 21 to purchase fuel for your laptop?
(Yes, I've thought of denatured alcohol! Sheesh!)
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
I got an object lesson in what's really going on here when I bought an Apple Newton 2100. Now, this final Newton sure won't replace a laptop for everyone, but it did for me: email, Web surfing, word processing, spreadsheets, the works, all in something the size of a smallish trade paperback, and powered from a standard-sized LiIon battery pack that can run the Newton for between 10 and 24 hours.
The Newton pulled this off by re-examining the architecture of a portable platform. If you make low power consumption a primary driver, instead of packing in the exact same family of peripherals that you use in a desktop platform which has (relatively) infinite power available, you get a machine which doesn't look a whole lot like today's laptops - but which also doesn't require 2.2 pounds of battery to run for 15 hours, either. The Newton 2100 has a 163 MHz processor, too, not one of those 12MHz wimpy things the other handhelds have. But this 163 MHz ARM RISC processor was designed from the ground up to use as little power as possible. The result is dramatic. It's fast when it needs to be, and the rest of the time it eats almost no power at all. Compare this to what an x86 or Pentium uses - even a "low-power" model.