I have been waiting for a fuel cell to come along for a long time now that I can refill on the go for continuous charging and power of my mobile gear like my iPhone and my notebook. I have used some fuel cells before, but they have been disposable. Toshiba has unveiled a new methanol fuel cell that is launching today that can be refilled on the go.
T-Mobile are offering a fuel-cell portable power pack as an accessory for their cellphone range, one of the first mainstream fuel-cell applications targeted at everyday consumers. The Medis 24/7 Xtreme Portable Power Solution runs on sealed cartridges of sodium borohydride, and can offer 20 Watt-hours from a single cartridge.
Each cell lasts up to 18 months unused, and is activated merely by squeezing it and slotting it into the charger device. Once activated, the cell should last for up to 3 months, though Medis recommend using it within six weeks.
I for one really look forward to the day when recharging my notebook or cell phone simply means squirting more fuel into its fuel cell rather than searching for an AC outlet. Fuel cells are coming for sure and a few of them are already on the market like the offering from Medis, though they aren’t quite what most of us want. What I want is a fuel cell like the one KDDI is showing off that is refillable with methanol and runs for up to 320 hours.
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Toshiba promised high and delivered, well, not at all with its first commercial fuel-cell, missing the tentative December 2008 prediction and then seeing March 2009 sweep by without a hint of a product launch. Now the company is claiming it will release an external battery-charging fuel cell device within the next two months.
If this is authentic, Toshiba has some interesting products lined up through 2010. Techblog.gr leaked a powerpoint slide of Toshiba’s product roadmap featuring a few handheld computers featuring the Qualcomm SnapDragon platform. There were prototypes first demoed at CES earlier this year, and from the looks of it, those prototypes are ending up as real products.
Sony has been demonstrating a number of fuel-cell concepts, ranging from portable power units to rechargers and even home speaker systems that have their own methanol power-source. Of most interest are the two devices seen here, which may look like retro radios but in fact combine a rechargeable Li-Ion battery with a methanol fuel-cell.
With the news last week that Toshiba could have a fuel cell powered device on the market by Christmas, today it’s the turn of Panasonic to make some methanol promises. It won’t be a fight for a spot underneath the tree between the two companies, though; Panasonic say they’ll have fuel cells, capable of running a laptop computer for five hour, on the market by 2012.
Toshiba has suggested that it may release a commercial product using a fuel-cell for power before Christmas 2008, ahead of the company’s own March 2009 target for such a device reaching the market. In an interview with Register Hardware, Toshiba’s European General Manager for Computer Systems Marketing and Business Development, Thomas Teckentrup, revealed that it should only be “a few more months before everything comes together”.
MTI Micro have been putting their Mobion fuel cell through it’s paces, in testing intended to demonstrate just how much improved the technology is over current Li-Ion power packs. A lab test version of the fuel-cell lasted 2,700 hours of continuous use, with further tests suggesting power degradation of less than 15-percent.
Canon have filed a patent that describes a compact fuel-cell system primarily intended for DSLR cameras but that has potential for inclusion in other portable electronics. The filing details the company’s solution to dealing with variances in load currents, an issue in applications such as DSLRs where sudden surges in power draw are frequent. It uses a number of individual fuel cells combined, with a DC-DC converter that combines the voltages as required.
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