We won't pretend that we weren't excited when Toshiba finally
launched its long talked about Dynario fuel-cell -- the first of its kind for consumer electronics. If you don't know already, the direct methanol fuel-cell (
DMFC) boasts its own fuel cartridge (which takes approximately 20 seconds to fill) with a concentrated methanol solution, resulting in its ability to charge USB devices on the go. Well,
Tech-On's gotten a hold of one of these bad boys, and they've taken plenty of photos of its innards, allowing us a unique opportunity to see what its all about. A few interesting observations they make: the cell itself -- which sells for ¥29,800 (about $328) -- is definitely worth the money.
Tech-On claims that the manufacturing and components alone are estimated at costing around ¥30,000. There's a lot more to see, so hit the source link -- and there's also one more interesting shot after the break.
posted January 1st 2010 1:01PM
This thing would not even be allowed there I bet.
@Al Capa This is a gadget site. Who loves gadgets? A: Nerds!
Nerds tend to think taking something literally, silly word puns, and imaging strange combinations and juxpositioning something into an unusual context are all funny.
Notice how often the humor here both in the reviews and comments is sometimes very dry. Now that I have explained that to you, AL, do you understand? Personally, I think a fuel cell large enough to charge a Chevy Volta or an Aptera would be great, especially if that fuel cell could use gasoline. That way I could fill up my future electric car with gas or methanol to generate electricity to make it go.
If only they would produce a small methonal fermentor so we could turn my organic food waste into methanol and reload the cartridge from that new appliance in our itchens. Otehrwise, this is just an interesting science experiement that won't yet change the world or save energy.
How is the methanol actually converted to electricity?
i would buy one right now if they could build it with a little more capacity so i could run my netbook off it...its basically a small generator that runs off methanol and if you guys are thumbs down because of the price of the refills, just keep in mind that methanol sells for about 50 cents to $1.00 per gallon much of the time and even if followed the price of gasoline (once fuel cells take off) they'd still be very competitive at $3-$4 a gallon...
right now i'm off the grid and use a small generator to power my netbook(with mobile broadband) and a few other things like a cell phone etc...i currently have to buy about 15-20 gallons of gas per month to run the generator(a $150 model from Kragen that puts out 800 continuous watts max) and each gallon of gas only lets me recharge my netbook about 3 times....i do have a small battery bank of ~1250 watt-hours(rated) that i really only use to run a Sirius radio - i could only get about 1 or 2 recharges of my netbook's 55 watt-hour battery from the battery bank when fully charged despite the ratings so i gave up on that after spending $250....
on the other hand, if i had one of these methanol fuel cells(assuming 80% efficiency in transferring charge to the battery and basing the power produced on the already mentioned 11 watt-hours per 14 ml of methanol) i could power my netbook 8 hours a day for 30 days on 1 single gallon of methanol....or i could recharge my cell phone in the neighborhood of 600 times on a single gallon of methanol....beats the hell out a regular generator or solar w/battery bank or anything else that i can think of.... and maybe they'll be able to design a fuel cell to run on other forms of alcohol, or diesel, biofuel, etc...
I don't want to sound crass to this whole discussion, but most of the argument above is coming from people who note they can get AAs, power outlets, a simple set of NiMH batteries from the local 7-Eleven.
Let's 'maybe' think about when you DON'T have access to stuff like that. How about long range hiking. Maybe these people who gets their butts stranded in the middle of no-where, or perhaps a country where they are just developing.
Let's say a project gave 10 devices to kids in a 3rd world country without power - maybe you'd want to throw in this piece of tech and they'd have their own power station for recharging.
Sure is easy to think narrowly from the the living room chair.