propane power? button-sized fuel cells.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/06/buttonbattery_s.php

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"PASADENA, Calif.--Engineers have created a propane-burning fuel cell that's almost as small as a watch battery, yet many times higher in power density. Led by Sossina Haile of the California Institute of Technology, the team reports in the June 9 issue of the journal Nature that two of the cells have sufficient power to drive an MP3 player. If commercialized, such a fuel cell would have the advantage of driving the MP3 player for far longer than the best lithium batteries available".

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whizzy!

Here's hoping to get those in 18650 format for 400 hours out of my U2 instead of 40 hours /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

I can see it now, mom I gotta go to the camping store to refill my MP3 players batteries with propane, or... geee and I thought lithium ion batteries blew up loud... BOOM!

They keep talking about it and promising to deliver and going all gaga over how much power their cells can deliver.

2 things.

1. I'll believe it when I have one grasped in my hands.
2. What is the energy efficiency of one of these things? Any better than internal combustion engines?

Frankly, I don't mind if the first ones they deliver commercially are the size of car batteries with equal power to weight ratios (and realistic amps). Don't really need all these pint-sized wonders yet. The advantage for me would be that they would fill the niche for smaller, quieter, fuel-powered generators.

I'm having trouble finding anything in the 1/2hp to 1hp range, which runs fairly quiet and doesn't involve lugging around a 20kg internal combustion engine. Looked at Stirling engines, but they all seem to be demonstration models with no real usable power, or else huge things that couldn't really be termed portable. (Anybody with Stirling engine plans, please contact me?)