Toshiba develops MP3 player with 60 hour fuel cell battery
By Thomas Ricker 
posted September 16th 2005 10:00AM
posted September 16th 2005 10:00AM
Toshiba, who wears the belt for world's smallest
methanol fuel cell, has now developed two
fuel-cell powered MP3 player prototypes. A flash-based player measuring 1.4 x 4.3 x 0.8-inches is said to run for 35
hours on a single 3.5ml charge of highly concentrated methanol while a hard drive based player swells to 2.6 x 4.9 x
1.1-inches and runs for about 60 hours on a single 10ml charge. Those dimensions are pretty sweet (the 60GB ipod is 2.4
x 4.1 x .75 inches by comparison) and will certainly get smaller once optimized for production. The players will be on
exhibit at CEATEC Japan starting October 4th. Could this mean actual product by Christmas 2006?
[Thanks, Roamerick]
How about a hybrid? Current technology for convenience, new technology for longer lasting.
" 93. Posted Sep 17, 2005, 12:54 AM ET by mediaphile
i spoke too soon.
turns out pure methanol is about...$1 per liter.
and this fuel cell 'juice' is 30% methanol and 70% water.
so, how many teaspoons are in a liter? that's like years of continuous use for $1"
This sparks ideas! imagine, say, when you buy a new device it comes with an X liter cask (say a ten litre for a laptop) of 30/70 Methanol/Water mixture.
That's enough for maybe ten, twenty years usage.
With many devices that get upgraded every other year or every 5,6 years etc that would be enough methanol for the first-hand life of the device!
For ten, twenty bux for ten liters of meth? I'm in!
Chuck in a little canister holding enough methanol for say 5 recharges.
am i the only one who thinks this would TOTALLY ROCK?
--neg
It's a brilliant idea, and I hope it catches also the eyes of a car dealership. Fuel cells in cars would be benificial to the oil companies, with the crisis of panic-buying in the past month.
Where this MP3 player has 60 hours, just buy the Sony 512MB/1GB MP3 Walkman with 70 hours battery life, that runs off a AAA battery. :)
On the comment about methanol not being a rewnewable fuel -
When most people talk about renewable fuels, they mean fuels that can be regenerated through natural resources. All fuel regeneration requires an input of energy, so in a certain sense, none of them are renewable (none of them causes energy to not be conserved).
I think chemists are currently working on ways to generate fuels like methane and methanol from sources that are naturally renewable instead of getting them from oil wells. I have a master's degree in chemistry and I've seen people working on this in labs that were in the same building as mine at Berkeley and Stanford.
We have to be creative and think outside the box if we're going to find solutions to the energy problems we face today. Some methods will fail. Hopefully, others won't. We need people to be willing to take risks.
"turns out pure methanol is about...$1 per liter.
and this fuel cell 'juice' is 30% methanol and 70% water.
so, how many teaspoons are in a liter? that's like years of continuous use for $1"
if this all turns out to be true. I'm sure that your old meth-powered player will become obsolete before you'd run out of the juice.
i only hope that whenever it comes out, that they've made it completely fool-proof. i can only imagine the idiots just trying anything they can to make it explode in their faces just so they can sue. not that methanol is highly flammable, or even flammable at all.
i think a good idea would be for it to be in the form of refillable butane lighters. no way to spill it. just a little can.