More fuel cell news

[Steve]

We heard about fuel cells for notebooks earlier in the week. Well, now it's time for mobiles to get their dose of fuel cell power. Japanese phone carrier KDDI will have fuel cell boosted phones on the market in the first half of next year. The Register reports:

The two phones were co-developed with Toshiba and Hitachi The Toshiba handset is a modified A5509T, which has a direct methanol fuel cell built on the back, above a regular internal Lithium-ion battery.

The fuel cell's refillable 7cc tank contains enough concentrated methanol - it's in a 99.5 per cent solution - to provide 2.5 times the operational duration of the regular battery, KDDI claimed.

A Hitachi W32H handset has been similarly augmented, though this time the fuel cell is mounted on the display-side of the clamshell handset. Hitachi's fuel-cell system also uses methanol, though the concentration is no more than 60 per cent, and its reservoir can hold only 3cc of the liquid.

Looks like 2006 will be the year of the DMFC.

[technophreak]

Sounds good. One question though, how expensive is methanol? I can't see it being too expensive or this wouldn't be a viable option but you never know.

[Funkstar]

Well we buy Methanol at work for £2 a litre. I would imagine that a litre of meths would be able to provide probably dozens if not hundreds of times the equivalent power of £2 worth of batteries

[Swafe]

Apparently each refil of a phone battery (As there almost out in japan) is 7ml, thats 140ish refills per litre... at 2 quid a litre, less than 2p to charge your phone, with something that has 2.5x the capacity of a normal battery.

A laptop battery, obviously, will need a lot more, but I litre, costing a pound, would probably refil your battery say 10-20 times id say depending on the capacity of the battery.

[mr_anderson187]

great idea this!

could get messy though, lol

[eloquence]

If they can make the cells easily refillable, then this will be deeply exciting. You'll be able to have full-feature 3G phones with nice screens that don't need such a pocket-busting battery, and they'll be able to be recharged in an instant.
The main concern I've had so far as been with the fuel cell laptop that LG? were working on, they were looking to sell individual cartridges, rather than having refillable cartridges - and the added cost of buying lots of cartridges, not to mention the hassle of having to keep a stock of them, would have been a real dis-incentive... if the manufacturers of the mobile phones can see enough sense to avoid that, then hopefully we'll be on to a winner.

In some ways what I'd probably want to see is a fixed fuel cell in the device, with a socket for refilling, and having refillable injectors that can do the refilling. That would make the recharging quick and easy, while just requiring the occasional purchase of a can or bottle of methanol for topping up the recharger.

[Swafe]

great idea this!

could get messy though, lol

Everything gets messy when your around, skirt, top, all sorts

[mr_anderson187]

Everything gets messy when your around, skirt, top, all sorts

My freshers week expiditions arent to be relayed to the world, lol

[Swafe]

Better change that avatar then....

[mr_anderson187]

Im swafe, im a big tell-tale snitch

AND HOW!

[Swafe]

Im mr anderson, I lick bum then go round covering random items of clothing in my dirty juice Oh baby

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