Fuel Cells in Laptops by 2004!

Hi all. I just found a very interesting article concerning fuel cells. This article claims that Toshiba and NEC are planning to put fuel cells in some laptops by the year 2004. This is particularly interesting because almost every time you read an article on fuel cells, they always just say that they will be available at some undisclosed time in the future and they don't tend to mention exact dates.

As anyone knows that has kept up with fuel cell technology over the years, they have been saying that fuel cells were only a few years away for more than a decade now, but it looks like the laptop manufacturers are finally about to bring the mythical fuel cell to fruition. As you can probably imagine, the mass production, and eventual price drop, of fuel cells will make for a tremendous boost to the high-end flashlight market.

The article says that "in a matter of years, fuel cell batteries no bigger than a cigarette lighter will run for 10 hours or more before being replaced." For anyone that would care to do the math, that is a heck of a lot of watt hours for such a very small space! Just imagine how long a 5 watt LED will run on a fuel cell the size of a cigarette lighter, and better yet, imagine it all being small enough to put on your keychain! This will be a modders dream come true. The future is definitely looking bright. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Here is the full article.

This is very good to hear.
I have been reading up on fuel cells alittle over the last few years.
This is the first time I have actually heard of one being used in the near future for a product such as that.

The drawback will of corse, be price. I'm sure these things are a pretty penny.

I will be very happy when the price and popularity of these fuel cells drop. They will have MANY applications.

These things will save ALOT in the long run. We throw out WAY to many batteries. Its a complette waste of resourses.

"Experts believe that laptops will likely be the first mass market for fuel cell technology. Shrinking the power packs enough to fit into cell phones will take longer to develop. For cars and power stations, there are huge infrastructure issues to resolve before fuel cells are widely used there."

Sorry I don't have a link, but I read that cell phone fuel cells might be here VERY soon. That senerio envisioned refilling the fuel cell witha tiny squeeze bottle of water/methanol, rather than actually pulling out the cell itself.

While we wait, we can reasonably expect continued "entertainment" from auto makers and politicians ever touting the impending HYDROGEN ECONOMY!!!

Jtice: "The drawback will of course, be price. I'm sure these things are a pretty penny."

Really it's not going to be as bad as you might think for technology this new and for a device that has a certain amount of platinum in it. The last time I checked, platinum was the most expensive precious metal in the world, even more expensive than gold. I believe that when our whole fuel system does change over to being hydrogen based that cheaper methods of fuel cell production are bound to be found that don't involve utilizing such a precious metal.

Here is the quote from the article concerning initial prices: "Prices are expected to run about $200 initially for a fuel-cell battery, compared with anywhere from $120 to $180 for traditional laptop batteries used in the most powerful notebooks."

Stainless: "While we wait, we can reasonably expect continued "entertainment" from auto makers and politicians ever touting the impending HYDROGEN ECONOMY!!!"

It's funny to me that it always seems to take about a decade for politicians to catch up to the current state of new technology. I was telling people more than 10 years ago that this country would eventually be forced to convert over to a hydrogen based economy. There are just too many advantages to hydrogen to be ignored. Here are just a few advantages of hydrogen over oil/gasoline right off the top of my head:

1. Perfectly clean burning with absolutely zero pollution. Burn hydrogen and you get water. How much cleaner can you ask for than that? I cannot imagine a fuel that could be more clean than this.
2. It produces no pollution if spilled out into the environment in it's raw form, unlike all the damage that an oil spill can cause.
3. Hydrogen is probably the most common element on Earth. It's literally everywhere. All water contains hydrogen and most of the Earth is covered in water.
4. Free energy and ease of production. Simply put the positive and negative electrodes from any solar panel or windmill into salt water and you can produce all the free hydrogen that you want!

I fully expect in my lifetime to see cars on the street that have solar panels on the roof that produce free fuel for the drive home while you work all day. This method may not produce all the fuel that you need, but what it produces is that much that you don't have to buy at the filling station. I dare anyone to show me any modern day car than can produce it's own gasoline for free. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

I don't see fuel cells as a big advantage for consumer electronics if I have to BUY the fuel, as opposed to just plugging a charger into the wall. Until I have hydrogen "outlets" all over the house, I'll pass. OTOH, they could be useful for emergency batteries that could be stashed in the glove box or something similar.

Don't know how it compares with fuel cells, but this little Mini Wankel Engine is interesting too.

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X-CalBR8 said:
1. Perfectly clean burning with absolutely zero pollution. Burn hydrogen and you get water. How much cleaner can you ask for than that? I cannot imagine a fuel that could be more clean than this.

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Easy: Charged batteries as fuel.
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3. Hydrogen is probably the most common element on Earth. It's literally everywhere. All water contains hydrogen and most of the Earth is covered in water.

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Yup, it is common. But it is always attached to something. And it REALLY likes to stay stuck there!
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I fully expect in my lifetime to see cars on the street that have solar panels on the roof that produce free fuel for the drive home while you work all day. This method may not produce all the fuel that you need, but what it produces is that much that you don't have to buy at the filling station.

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In a day of solar charging on an H2 car, you'd get about 1 mile of range. Solar panels need to come a lot farther for this to be practical.

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I dare anyone to show me any modern day car than can produce it's own gasoline for free. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

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Is there a prize? Anybody else know what's coming here?
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Are you offing anything? I'd hate to give this away for free....
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OK. I'll accept the dare. I have two of such cars parked in my garage. You can follow the link in my sig to see them. My cars are in fact fueled for free. If I had two H2 cars, I could travel about 1/4th as far on the same free fuel.

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X-CalBR8 said:
This is particularly interesting because almost every time you read an article on fuel cells, they always just say that they will be available at some undisclosed time in the future and they don't tend to mention exact dates....As anyone knows that has kept up with fuel cell technology over the years, they have been saying that fuel cells were only a few years away for more than a decade now...

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I can show you quotes from the turn of the century that talk about H2 car technology being just a few years away. That is the turn of LAST century, at least before 1920.

For at least ten years now I've heard that fuel cells are two years away from mass production for laptops and such. Ask Leo (Hotfoot) - this discussion is actually how we met a while back. Fuel cells have been the technology of the future, for almost 100 years now...

We use them for several things, and they have their place. My personal take is that their place is NOT in automobiles. Laptops I can see.

Darell: Wow, you've made so many comments that it's hard to know where to begin. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

So far as the issue of fuel cells versus battery power goes, well, I believe that the article more than adequately proved that the power density of a fuel cell is very many times greater than that of a rechargeable battery. Not to mention that a lot of rechargeable batteries are still made of lead, and a lot of it. Lead is one of the most heavy elements on earth that is in common use by man while hydrogen is the lightest. This makes for great inefficiencies in almost all but stationary applications. Pound for pound, hydrogen carries a heck of a lot of energy compared to lead based batteries.

Also, there is the problem of people not disposing of lead/cadmium/lithium batteries properly and leading to increased environmental pollution in that respect. To the best of my knowledge, there is nothing at all that is harmful to the environment contained in a fuel cell so it would hurt nothing if it were to end up in a landfill somewhere.

When I offered a dare to anyone to show me a car that could produce it's own gasoline, I meant just that, gasoline. If I had said I dare you to show me a car that can produce it's own power then naturally a solar car would qualify. That's not to say that a solar powered car would not have a few advantages over a hydrogen burning car, but it also has some very serious disadvantages such as charge time. With a hybrid H2 car that is capable of burning methanol, you could still go to a filling station, and for all practical purposes, nearly instantly fill your car to it's full energy capacity. This can not be done with any rechargeable battery on earth. It can be done with super capacitors, but the power density levels are far too low when compared to a lead acid battery for them to feasibly be used exclusively in automobiles.

So far as being able to show me where they were talking about using hydrogen power a century ago, heck, I could show you where a man took out a patent for a nuclear powered submarine before the atom had ever even been split but it wouldn't prove much.

What can be proved (as much as we have proof of anything reported in the press) is that companies are announcing that they are *already* manufacturing fuel cells, not just that they are just going to do it like they have been bragging about for the last decade, but that they are already manufacturing them and getting them ready for a release date. I've read several articles in several publications in the last few months that have stated this, so it is either true or else there are a lot of big shots from a lot of major companies (mostly in Japan) that are telling some major whopping lies to the world (which I'm not saying for sure that they aren't). They could always just be talking out of their butts just to keep their competition guessing, but I don't think this is so because we are talking about some really big names here and I don't think they would be so quick to want to tarnish their corporate names by telling such blatant lies like this.

Wow Darell, I can sure tell why for your sig line that you say that you are "the Solar Powered EV Nut". You seem to be very passionate about this issue. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif I hope that you haven't taken offense to any of my comments. I guess I just never realized that anyone would defend battery power so strongly and emotionally because to me it is, for the most part, a purely academic discussion.

When the new technology comes out, (notice that I said when, not if) and if it has significantly greater power density than rechargeable batteries like everyone seems to claim, then I will use it, if it doesn't then I won't, but at least it will give us modders something new and fun to play around with. Also, you've got to admit that it seems like a very cool thing that you could just pour some alcohol in your flashlight to bring it up to full power when you are off in the middle of some woods camping, at night, and with no way to recharge your rechargeable batteries, huh? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Darell the EV Nut /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif I can remember reading about the GM Impact when the prototype was undergoing testing and feeling really excited about it. Sad thing is that I haven't even got the Toyota Prius because it costs as much as the Toyota Avalon (luxury class vehicle). Can't justify the cost, can't recoup the initial outlay. So sad. The Impact never even came on to our roads.

Fuel cells would be useful for high energy demand devices such as laptops (and flashlights /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif ). This is more for the question of energy density of the power source. So fuel cells would be good in this application.

In cars, the question still remains that of how much pollution will it save? Energy density and ease of refuelling are just there to make it competitive with current engines. The GM Impact would not really be a good car to have on Perth roads because all our electrical power still comes primarily from coal and natural gas generators. We have no clean power source. (There are windfarms in Albany, Esperance and Denham, but they only manage to supplement the power needs of those particular towns.) So even thought the power stations are able to convert the energy more efficiently than internal combustion engines, one still has to deal with transmission losses, storage losses, etc. It's almost back to square one, if not worse off because of all the lead acid batteries that the car needs. And the summer heat here is so bad that the average life of car batteries is 3 years.

So sad, isn't it? The fuel cell may be a better choice for Perth because of our access to huge fields of natural gas, and the retail network already in place. (I'm not talking about LPG which starts out as petroleum.)

Steelwolf: Those are some great points. It doesn't make a lot of difference if a car is electrically powered or not if the power plants are still polluting to produce the electricity in the first place. With fuel cells running off of methanol though, you have a renewable and environmentally friendly fuel that doesn't pollute at any stage of the fuel production or consumption process, at least no pollution that I'm currently aware of. Then there is always the environmental issues involved in all of those lead acid batteries as well if they are not properly disposed of.

I guess the big question still to be answered in all of this is if they can really pull off all of their grandiose claims concerning fuel cells and produce them at a price range that the average person can afford. The proof is in the pudding, as they say. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Uh oh, you're both going to get it now. I have ESP so I can give you a preview of what will be said.

First, contraty to Author's belief Lead is HARDLY used now days when advanced batteries are called for. *NONE* of the current production EVs ( /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif ) use Lead Acid batteries. Find me a cell phone or laptop or PDA produced within the past 5 years that used Lead Acid batteries and I'll give you my McLux.

One of the problems with Hydrogen in cars is that it takes a massive ammount of evergy to actually produce the Hydrogen to go into the car, and then another good fair ammount compressing it/loading it onto the car's tanks. This is less of an issue in a Laptop or Phone.

Steelwolf, you're wrong buddy. The Impact *DID* make it out. Darell happens to have it parked in his driveway. Unfortunately, for purely political reasons, nobody was allowed to purchase them so they're dissapearing from the road quite literally as we speak as GM prys them out of happy owners hands.

I wonder who will put these into commercial flashlights first?
David<><

Mag (snicker)

Saaby: I didn't realize that current generation electric cars were using non-lead based batteries. Thanks for the update. Still, I'm sure that whatever type of batteries are in use will have some degree of a negative effect on the environment though because even the lithium batteries that are used in all cell phones and laptop computers these days have a negative environmental impact.

In other words, I've not heard of any electricity storage system yet, besides hydrogen, that does not pollute in some pretty serious ways (excluding super capacitors). All currently used battery technologies that I've ever read about have their environmentally negative characteristics if not disposed of properly and you guys know as well as I do that the average person in the world is completely clueless about properly disposing of batteries in an environmentally conscious way. For example, I've never known of a single friend or acquaintance of mine my whole life that has ever recycled a single throw away or rechargeable NiCad/NiMh battery, excluding car batteries, and that's only because you get fined in this state for improperly disposing of them. Of course that still doesn't stop them from ending up in landfills everywhere and polluting the ground water…

I guess what I'm trying to say is basically, if a product is sold to the public commercially, you can never be sure where it will end up no matter how many laws you pass so it pays to make a product that will not seriously damage the environment even if it is disposed of improperly, because to a certain degree it always will be.

"I wonder who will put these into commercial flashlights first?"

Probably Surefire. Who else do you know that could get away with charging well over $200.00 for a small tactical flashlight. LOL.

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RevDavid said:
I wonder who will put these into commercial flashlights first?
David<><

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Better yet, who will be the first CPF member to use it in a flashlight?? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Here are a couple of fun fuel cell links to check out:
http://fuelcellstore.com/
http://www.fuelcells.org/

Here is a picture of a laptop running off of an external fuel cell. It may be a bit big and ugly, but it goes to show that it can be done with currently available technology and materials.

Well the problem I see with small fuel cells is that they are about 25% efficient, while even small batteries are about 80%. So no matter what you're feeding a fuel cell, you're wasting 75% of it.

I will let Darell handle NiMH batteries being harmful to the environment.

Would anyone want a coal fired plant to run 3 times as long or pollute 3 times as much so they can use a fuel cell over a NiMH battery? How come they never mention that? Or that it will cost you three times as much to charge up a fuel cell?

I will admit the big advantage of the fuel cell is the size to weight ratio, after all that's why the use them in the shuttle.

As far as current cost of bigger fuel cell generators they are about 10 times that of a good diesel generator, or about 30 times that of a gasoline generator. Believe me I have been looking in to it. The big advantage is they are silent, and can heat water with the waste heat.

Hopefully they will get cheaper, but since they produce so much heat, it's not likely they will ever catch NiMH's for efficiency.