News Toshiba Shows a Working Fuel Cell

Tosh has been working on Fuel Cells for some time now, and have got it licked. But don't plan on buying one for you're laptop anytime soon, as they won't be comercializing the battery replacement technology for another three years...

This from PCWorld:

HANOVER, GERMANY -- Toshiba used the CeBIT trade show here to demonstrate for the first time an operating prototype fuel cell for notebook PCs, but the company--citing size, weight, and regulatory concerns--said it will not commercialize the technology for about another three years.

The company previously said that it intended to have its direct methanol fuel cell for notebook PCs ready for the market in 2004, but the schedule has slipped several times.

DMFCs are being developed to replace batteries for portable electronic devices. They typically work by mixing methanol with air and water to produce electrical power. Only methanol is required as fuel, and the byproducts are heat and water.

The prototype shown at CeBIT produces about 20 watts of electricity and can power an A5-size Portege M300 notebook PC for about 10 hours on a single charge of nearly 100 percent methanol, according to the company.

More here

10 hours! Wow!

 

But how easy will it be to re-fuel these things? I wouldn't exactly like to buy a canister of methanol every time I want to recharge my MP3 player.

 

10 hours is great, hopefully they'll be able to tweak a good bit more out of it in the next 3 years.

As far as I've heard it you could just take small battery sized containers of methanol to swap into the laptop, perhaps with a way to refill them at home? At 10 hours a shot thats not too shabby at all especially as you might well be in range of a plug a lot of the time.

 

I'm guessing these would be disposable. the metanol turns to water, the water is stored in the battery after use, the batter is discarded. Cheap and cheerful. Bidegradable and fun.
EDIT: or maybe they'd do those things like travel curling tongs and stuff do, a sealed methanol "pack" you can swap out.

 

****! I cant believe these have come out AFTER i leave uni. There's litres and litres of "free" 99.9% methanol in the labs

 

Take a barrel of it with you when you leave

 

I may be wrong but dont they produce hydrogen as well? My chemistry isnt what it was so I may be well off but wouldnt that be very explosive?

 

hydrogen + oxygen -> water. If that didn't happen cars would have explosive exhaust fumes as well.

 

I'd guess they emit CO2 and H20 gas because methanol is CH3OH. They would probably take oxygen from the air and emit the products as gases. I just hope that the fuel will not be in proprietary tanks like ink cartrages. It would be really annoying to have to buy proprietary tanks of methanol that would only work once and had a chip to disable them if they were refilled (like the monopoly on ink cartridges, ink jet printers have).

Also, does anyone know of any pictures. Or does anyone know where to buy a fuel cell to experiment with, I'd like to try this.

 

...erm make one?

From what i remember all you need is a catalyst chamber with two chambers. one for hydrogen and the other for oxygen. The trick behind them is to allow the two gaseous elements to bind to make water but make the electrons, they share, to pass through a circuit. I think the carbon from the methanol is just combined with oxygen in the same way but makes CO2 insted.

 

kinda like butain lighters i'd of guessed.

Hamlesh (whos on these forums i wounder if he willl rear he's head in here) has always said fuel cells are round the corner, i thought "nah too far off" but this looks pretty damn cool.

but 20w is kinda pathetic for a x86 laptop, maybe this will force us to use RISC