Methanol Fuel-Cell Battery For Your Laptop? 179
Nick writes: "I ran across this accidentally when I was researching fuel cell cars. They have come out with a little methanol fuel-cell battery they hope will be more powerful than lithium ion batteries, at competitive prices too! (well, in five years maybe) Also check out howstuffworks for a great article on fuel cells in general." Beating Li-Ion batteries by a factor of ten is a very worthy goal.
Methanol fuel cell (Score:3, Interesting)
Great news everybody! (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously though, how do you recharge a fuel cell. The howstuffworks article covers hydrogen fuel cells which you recharge by... inserting more hydrogen. They also make water, bad for notebooks. This prototype looks like a sealed system and being billed as a replacement for Li-Ion, which means it's rechargeable and doesn't leak. "Carbon nanotubes" are very cool [rdg.ac.uk] but there's nearly no mention of an application to new forms of fuel cells in the literature [msu.edu]. This press release is great but... where's the science?
Just curious.
Small? Memory? Recharging time? (Score:3, Interesting)
What I'd like to know is whether these batteries will have a so-called memory. Until Li-Ion batteries became common in laptops, cell phones and camcorders, I remember that you had to completely empty out the batteries before recharging them or you'd drastically shorten their lives. For example, let's say you have a 30-minute battery for your camcorder. If you used it for 15 minutes and then charged it, then from now on, the battery will only last 15 minutes. This can be a little annoying for a camcorder, because if your battery was partially empty and you wanted it full to record some event, you'd have to plan ahead and leave the camera running to empty out the battery, then wait several hours for it to completely recharge. (Yeah, recharging times were very slow on these batteries.) On the other hand, while this is merely annoying for cameras, think of the effect it has on laptops--you'd have to leave your laptop running until it runs out of power and shuts off abruptly. This is a constant problem for computers. Li-Ion batteries are not subject to this "memory" problem, and they also charge pretty quickly, if I know what I'm talking about. For example, the battery in my phone lasts about three days (one if I talk a lot) and takes only hours to charge. (I don't know exactly how many hours because I've never sat there watching the damn thing.) If these fuel-cell batteries are small, don't have a memory, last longer AND have much faster charging times, then I think they will eventually replace Li-Ion batteries.
Cell operation life (Score:2, Interesting)
The basic problem is that the power storage technology has not kept up with the large demands for power.
We need something non-flammable and far less toxic. Maybe a zinc-air solution.
Japanese Companies have all the fun (Score:3, Interesting)
Why don't we see these types of things from American companies? Is it a lack of R&D? Legal restrictions on how far they can spread horizontally? Or just a lack of interest? Where are the cool ideas from American companies? And don't give me iPod.