BBC Tests Pre-Commercial Toshiba Fuel Cell Laptop

nbannerman writes "Fuel cells have been talked about a lot recently, but Toshiba have finally demonstrated a working model. The BBC News website provides some interesting background on fuel cells, but does carrying a warning for the future; 'Toshiba's phase one fuel cell shows how near, but also how far, the version is from being a commercial reality.'"

10 Hours

[ch-chuck]

A small, plastic, brick-shaped 100 millilitre cartridge with methanol fuel that looks like an ink-jet printer cartridge

probably costs like an ink-jet printer cartridge too. But all it has to be is 'the best' and a certain class will be lining up to buy carts at $49.95 a pop, on company expense (think petrochemical and pharmaceutical industries).

Re:A gas powered laptop!

[Kadin2048]

what is wrong with batteries?

Two words: energy density. There is no battery technology currently available or in development, that I know of, which approaches the energy density of petrochemicals or methanol, and probably of compressed hydrogen as well. So there is a lot of interest in producing a compact power source which runs on a high-density fuel, because you could increase the capacity of the computer's power source beyond what would be practical on batteries.

Right now, it seems like in laptops you have two choices: you can either get the very small ones that have decent battery life (iBooks, Sony Vaio, probably others), or you can get those huge, hot-as-Hades "tabletop" notebooks that really only have batteries to keep them from shutting down while you're carrying them from one outlet to the next. I don't think I'm the only one who would be really interested in getting my hands on a desktop replacement with good (6-8 hours real usage, by which I mean heavy HD and optical I/O, constant WLAN usage, maximum brightness screen and headphone audio use) battery life, especially if I could take it to places that don't have electricity available and "recharge" it with some sort of compressed-gas or fuel canisters. Or have a compact laptop with a smaller screen and less bells and whistles that ran for days or weeks on a single fueling. You're not going to get to either of those goals with current battery technology (unless you want to hire a sherpa to carry your spares around).

Personally I find the Toshiba thing pretty exciting. My big turn-off would be that I wouldn't want to buy a first-generation device that used some sort of strange vendor-specific refill. I've had too many bad experiences in the past where you get the first generation of something that requires a steady supply of consumable parts, and after a year or two the manufacturer stops making them, and you're SOL. I hope that in all this work that Toshiba, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Samsung and Sanyo are doing together, they've invented a standard refill for these things: when it gets to the point where the refills are either widely available from a single manufacturer or less-easily from a variety of manufacturers (who aren't directly affiliated with the maker of the principal device), then count me in.

windup

[zogger]

I sort of like the idea of a crank or windup clockwork spring generator for additional electrical supply, like the MIT laptop was originally supposed to have. If it is spring and clockwork, you don't have to wind for a long time, my baygen/freeplay [freeplayenergy.com] radios (they have flashlights, too) you can wind completely up in less than a minute, then they give 30 minutes radio. I know it wouldn't last as long with a laptop, but it would be *some* emergency power as your battery started to go. There's even a foot powered generator you could get, throw it on the floor and just a slow pumping action acts as a generator, leaving your hands free and not bothering the computer. Something like this, perhaps a bit beefier the Stepcharger [aladdinpower.com]

FuelSell Power

[Doc Ruby]

"size, noise and weight"

The noise from the fuelcell will disappear when microfluidics are used to pump the fuel and exhaust. That will also drop the size (volume), and even the weight. Though 0.792 specific gravity methanol will weigh about 792g (1.75lbs) in the liter capacity, so the total cell will probably continue to weigh about the same. Which is a lot less than the weight of 10h in electric batteries.

A really interesting gain could come from integrating the cell reservoir with the rest of the volume of the entire notebook. Fill the spaces currently filled with air with fuel (protected of course by a tough insulating/nonflammable layer), and the overall volume of the notebook could remain about the same, especially considering the airfilled shockbarrier protecting LCDs. Clever engineering could circulate the waste heat in the fuel, much as modern car fuelpumps are cooled by the gas in the tank in which they sit. Really clever engineering could harness the waste heat to circulate the fuel not just to the heat exchangers, but also through the pump, for efficiency increase (and heat reduction).

I expect that Toshiba is already testing its microfluidics version privately. PR like the BBC review will generate excitement for even a clunky first introduction. A quiet, smaller, lighter introduction will exceed those expectations and increase sales with even better reviews.

Maybe the improvements will only come out from up Toshiba's sleeve gradually. They might patent them early, then introduce them to pump their sales curves. I don't believe they will introduce a noisy fuelcell as early as 6 months from now, so they surely have more than they're demo'ing. Which gives me more confidence that they're going to pull this one off.

Now if it will just run on sake, and give massages, Toshiba will have retaken the "Personal Computer" from the dull interpreters who have made it a boring commodity.