Canon's Fuel Cell May Drive Portable Gear 197
RX8 writes "Canon, Inc., has taken the wraps off prototype rechargeable hydrogen fuel cells, the likes of which may one day power digital cameras, media players, and printers. Canon's demonstrated fuel cells win even more points on the environmental front: while companies such as Toshiba, Sanyo, and NEC have also been working on fuel cells (and had been expected to have developed fuel cell-driven notebook computers by now), those efforts are based on DMFC technology which derives hydrogen from methanol, producing small amounts of carbon dioxide (itself a greenhouse gas) in the process. Canon's cells obtain hydrogen from a refillable cartridge with no toxic byproducts."
Re:Mystery Cartridge! (Score:2, Interesting)
Either that or they're making some eco-friendly statement, kind of like "The Day After Tomorrow"'s ".. i've never seen the air look so clean!"
lobbying investors? (Score:1, Interesting)
and those of us familiar with the laws of thermodynamics probably won't penalize them when it comes time to buy a new camera. alas.
owing to many recent less-than-science articles, it would be fun if the community could collectively evaluate articles in terms of merit/originality, placing them into single-word/phrase categories such as "lies" or "propaganda" or "dog poop" or "good stuff" or "the holy grail"...
Low temperature performance (Score:3, Interesting)
Energy Density (Score:5, Interesting)
A letter from the hydrogen-powered future (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, some people have their own hydrogen-generating machines. Of course, these run on electricity; see, the generation of hydrogen costs more energy than the hydrogen contains - that is, it has an EROEI (energy returned on energy invested) less than one. Whatever you're processing to make hydrogen, you have to use up energy to get the reaction happening. Even if you wanted to do this, every home in the industrialised world would need a hydrogen-generating machine that ran on electricity - the manufacturing of which would cost enormous amounts of energy and materials, even if it worked at generating energy.
In some places, hydrogen is generated in big power plants and delivered "on tap" to your home or office. This might sound dangerous, but then again, people had gas stoves once, until natural gas production peaked and the price tripled overnight. Again, you'd need to retro-fit an enormous amount of infrastructure in which to deliver the hydrogen - the laying of which would cost enormous amounts of energy and materials, even if it worked at generating energy.
In any case, we need to do something. I mean, we've got all these gadgets - the manufacturing of which cost us enormous amounts of energy and materials - and they're all powered by billions of hydrogen fuel cells - the manufacturing of which cost us enormous amounts of energy and materials. Even though the average electronic device consumes ten times its weight in fossil fuels during its manufacture [un.org], and even though the generation of hydrogen costs twice as much energy as the resulting hydrogen contains [culturechange.org], people still bought into this sham in droves, believing that it's better for the environment.
In reality, it's made the problem more widespread because we demand more energy than ever before, and it hasn't solved anything because we haven't really found a new source of energy with which to replace fossil fuels. Made me think twice about buying that hybrid car, too [lifeaftertheoilcrash.net].
You try telling people this was a bad idea, though. They'll look up from their plates of raw vegetables and mugs of rain water, and tell you to keep your big mouth shut.
Re:So now what? (Score:2, Interesting)
clean and safe? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Cleaner? (Score:3, Interesting)
"Alisa Viejo" dhmo [google.com]
Re:Mystery Cartridge! (Score:3, Interesting)
PR is a wonderful thing.
C02 is not really a issue... (Score:4, Interesting)
Methanol is a good choice for fuelling cars too, since it generates more power than gasoline, less CO2 and it's cheaper to produce. The only problem is the oxidation it produces, but this will not be a issue when we switch over to eletric cars, powered by fuel cells!
The problem with fossil combustibles, like gasoline and diesel, is the oil they come from. Since it was trapped under the ground for millions of years, the CO2 contained on it is no longer part of the planet ecosystem. When we burn it, were injecting new CO2 to the atmosphere, and that's the main cause of the greenhouse effect.
Re:Power source development (Score:1, Interesting)
But seriously I think the point about the oil industry having the means of production and possibly wanting to be paid to build all this new infrastructure was a good point. But there are attractive facts about hydrogen fuel cells that all you haters seem to be forgetting about:
(1) Longer battery life/quicker recharge time (just replace the fuel! No hours of waiting for your laptop to be recharged)
(2) Lighter portables. What percentage of a laptop's weight is the battery again?
(3) Emissions-free (mostly) operation. OK so Lithium-ion batteries are also emissions free. But in cars, fuel cells would be an improvement in terms of the emissions department. (Note that I didn't say emissions free production of the fuel. Maybe we'll get there eventually. In the meantime, it's a step in the right direction.)
And why can't our single farmers produce bio-ethanol to fuel our portable HFC-electronics?
And for all you folks who love to point out that you can't get something for nothing; but no one's trying to say that that's what HFCs are. But let me ask you this: are lithium-ion batteries something-for-nothing? Or even more efficient? Once you've factored in how much energy was wasted producing the energy required to charge the battery, then how much was lost by the battery itself, do you really come out thinking that fuel cells are a step backwards?
And if you really want to get down to the nitty-gritty, think of all the cost of getting our power in the first place, especially if we're talking about oil. Think of the wars that have taken place (or are taking place...), the lives that have been lost. Think of the man-hours that have gone into drilling up all that oil and then think of all the pollutants that have come out of refining it. You're trying to tell me that after factoring all of that in, you're still going to say that hydrogen fuel cells aren't a good idea? They're not maybe a little more a efficient, a little less polluting? Even if we fuel them with bio-ethonal? Or hydrogen generated by 50% efficient solar panels? I know different people are saying different things. Many are just saying that they doubt it'll come out any time soon. But many many others are doubting its usefulness as a fuel altogether. I've heard a lot of doubters but I've seen no proof or numbers to justify their doubt. Show me the numbers my doubting friends, show me the numbers.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Why hydrogen? Use it for heat.. (Score:4, Interesting)
There's another use of windmill power that requires no fancy conversion electronics, or fancy electrolysis setups. Run whatever horrible waveform you get out of your alternator on a stick into a big old resistor that gets hot. This is cost-effective for me (in a rural setting) to heat my home with now, versus using diesel (heating oil). Nicely enough, periods that use more heat often are much more windy.
More interesting would be an engineering comparison on the efficiencies if using windmill-heated steam versus direct hydrogen combustion. Both would be mobile, but the steam could easily drive a turbine.
Either way, you'd need millions of windmills to replace the energy consumed daily in the form of oil. It's important to keep that in perspective. There is NO good mass volume alternative to oil in the near future, people should be planning accordingly. Unfortunately, that seems unlikely to happen.
Re:Why hydrogen? Use it for heat.. (Score:5, Interesting)
True, but it's still easier than storing electricity.
There's another use of windmill power that requires no fancy conversion electronics, or fancy electrolysis setups. Run whatever horrible waveform you get out of your alternator on a stick into a big old resistor that gets hot. This is cost-effective for me (in a rural setting) to heat my home with now, versus using diesel (heating oil)
But that suggestion is only useful for less than half of the year (depending where you live) when you actually need to heat your home. During the summer there's still quite a lot of wind which would be going to waste.
Either way, you'd need millions of windmills to replace the energy consumed daily in the form of oil.
Indeed, and I don't think anyone (apart from a few nutty greens) would suggest otherwise.
There is NO good mass volume alternative to oil in the near future, people should be planning accordingly. Unfortunately, that seems unlikely to happen.
Fission is a good alternative to fossil fuels, produces energy in a large quantity and is in many respects less polluting (if only because you seal up the waste and store it instead of pumping it into the atmosphere). Modern fission reactors are also very safe.
In the long run, fusion looks promising (especially since the politicians have now stopped arguing about where to build ITER) but still a way off
Orbital solar arrays also have a lot of potential - even more so if we get our finger out and set up a moon base since much of the structure of the satellites could be manufactured on the moon and then launched relatively inexpensively with mass drivers. This stuff isn't science fiction - it _can_ be done if the investment is made. Sadly the people in power seem to be happy to blindly burn fossil fuels until we have completely run out. I guess today's politicians are safe in the knowledge that they won't be in power when the shit hits the fan.
Re:fossil fuels for now (Score:4, Interesting)
The methanol fuel cell produces the same amount of CO2 (or more, per volume unit) as if it was burning normal gasoline. The beauty of fuel cell here shines in comparison with (lousy) energy density, efficiency and recharge rate of a battery.
One day we may be driving metanol-fueled cars or planes since methanol is pretty easy to make from coal. When that happens, the platinum-group metals used in fuel cells will not be cheaper than today - new industry uses of paladium and platinum are found every day but there is only very little to go around. Shortage of rhodium, palladium and platinum can be technologicaly much bigger problem than lack of fossil fuels. So my guess is that the new methanol motor will have some kind of good old internal combustion engine in it again.
I don't think we disagree (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm in no way opposed to fuel cells - in fact a distant cousin more or less invented the modern fuel cell - but I have considerable experience of pressurised hydrogen and believe me, it is a pig to contain and a pig to manage. Metal hydrides have consistently failed to live up to expectations for hydrogen storage. The advantage of hydrogen is that leaks indoors are relatively safe compared to propane or butane, and unlike methanol it is not toxic. The other advantage, that no CO2 is produced, is lessened because the oil industry's proposals for making the hydrogen result in a lot of CO2 at point of manufacture. The system may be overall carbon neutral, but so are the biofuels.
I don't doubt that in the long term we will come up with a better localised storage/generation technology. I just doubt it will take over in my lifetime.
Re:Why hydrogen? Use it for heat.. (Score:3, Interesting)
But fission works. Right now.
And it's cost efficient.
And it pollutes, but _much_ less than any other means of energy generation.
It even generates less radioactive waste than some. And the waste it generates is manageably containable. Plus, you could always get rid of your waste once you had a fusion reactor working. With that kind of amount of energy, someone would come up with some soution.
About using windmills.... has there been any discussion about the effects of actual widespread wind farms on the environment? Does it make a difference, extracting energy from the wind, in the natural course of events, or it it too small for us to care? n general, we actually are too small, but weather is a complex system that could have some weak spots, I believe.
Re:fossil fuels for now (Score:3, Interesting)
Well you are not really recharging them you are refilling them like the gas tank in your car or the Propane tank that your grill uses. My question is just how useful this will be. Where will I get these magic cartridges and how much will they cost? It only takes a few cents of electric to recharge my notebook and I can find a plug pretty much anywhere. What about on airplanes? Can I carry these cartridges on a plane? Seems like a very expensive replacement for batteries to me.
Re:Why hydrogen? Use it for heat.. (Score:3, Interesting)
As for the windmills. Currently the problems listed usually deal with birds and bats flying into them or getting hit by them. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,69
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/05/17/news-lewis.php [laweekly.com]
http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=16383 [heartland.org]
Ignoring the eminent domain portions, the main problem seems to be that all the best spots for wind power are on bird migration routes. (Makes sense if you think about it). If you mean what effect it could have on the weather? Well, wind comes from air moving from higher to lower pressure areas. That usually means from warmer to colder as well. We are tapping a fraction of that energy to make electricity. (Not sure what fraction, mind you). So we probably are affecting the weather to some extent, but probably not enough to have a noticeable impact. It would all depend on the ammount we are extracting from the wind.
Re:A letter from the hydrogen-powered future (Score:1, Interesting)
There is no one answer, no need to hurl derrogatory or judgemental statements. The energy consumed to create hydrogen is only free if you use the sun or wind. What about the energy consumed to mine, refine, and transport fossil fuels, only to end up in a cycle whose efficiency is AT BEST 32% (gas powered electricity turbines). In a fuel cell that performs internal reformation (Molten Carbon, etc.) the C02 by products can be stored in small tanks rather than exhausted. In the future of coal fired electric furnaces the same is true, provided they are the new type that do not actually burn the coal, but gassify it. Technology is the answer to the problem that is technology.
Re:fossil fuels for now (Score:3, Interesting)