What is Digg?18 Comments
- EwanSpence, on 01/07/2009, -3/+14Not going to happen, and isn;t green It costs three times as much energy to create hydrogen as a fuel cell provides, so horribly wasteful
- Dailydose4me, on 01/07/2009, -2/+9Green is good. :D
- superkendall, on 01/07/2009, -0/+5Fuel cells are a horrible idea for portable devices. You have to bring, or find fuel for it - electricity can be found almost anywhere and you can use solar to bridge the gaps when that fails.
If you're gone for a week, how many hydrogen canisters to bring with you? Then what do you do with them after you refuel?
I like them a lot in cars, because we already have a good fueling model for cars that just needs to be converted. - Thuban, on 01/07/2009, -0/+4Interesting how the article is almost apologetic that they haven't found the eureka moment to power a device with a fuel cell. Still it's a step, which begets the next step, and the next, and the next till EUREKA. All good things in time.
- uptwolait, on 01/07/2009, -1/+5Dilithium crystals.
- seaofcheese, on 01/08/2009, -1/+4Looks cool but I can just imagine it now Made in China.
- lamejoketeller, on 01/07/2009, -0/+3"It's very small!"
- skintigh, on 01/07/2009, -1/+4I'm interested in how they are going to store enough hydrogen to power a gadget. Would there be a tiny tank of H2 at 500 PSI? Better not drop your gadget. EVER.
- flamesoftheend, on 01/08/2009, -0/+3In a related digg article - Worlds smallest fuel cell costs more than any middle class family could afford!
- zambuka, on 01/08/2009, -0/+3This type of fuel cell does not use a pressurised hydrogen canister. If you all would read the article you would see that it actually uses plain old H2O stored in a small reservoir. It uses a metal hydride to seperate the hydrogen from the oxygen before it then uses the now liberated hydrogen to generate electricity.
FTA:
"The new device has just four components. A thin membrane separates a water reservoir above from a chamber containing metal hydride below. Beneath the metal hydride chamber there is an assembly of electrodes. Tiny holes in the membrane allow the water molecules to reach the adjacent chamber as vapour. Once there, the vapour reacts with the metal hydride to form hydrogen, which fills the chamber, pushing the membrane upwards and blocking the flow of water"
Not the most efficient method but it makes the hydrogen storage a lot simpler than trying to lug it around as a compressed gas. This is similar to how methanol fule cells work. Obviously the weak point of this type of fuel cell is the metal hydride used to split the water as it can be difficult to regenerate or replace. - armo, on 01/08/2009, -0/+2FTA
"Tiny holes in the membrane allow the water molecules to reach the adjacent chamber as vapour. Once there, the vapour reacts with the metal hydride to form hydrogen, which fills the chamber, pushing the membrane upwards and blocking the flow of water (see image, top right)." - skintigh, on 01/07/2009, -0/+2Not to mention H2 is the smallest molecule, and thus the leakiest gas in the universe, so you'll have to constantly refill even if you never use your gadget.
- DirtyBinLV, on 01/07/2009, -1/+3Commercially available hydrogen is produced from natural gas. That's not going to change for a long while. The amount of electricity needed to electrolyze water is prohibitively expensive..
- DirtyBinLV, on 01/07/2009, -2/+4Where is this hydrogen magically coming from? Natural gas?
- RipleyIsDead, on 01/08/2009, -1/+2The whole thing runs on water.
- skintigh, on 01/07/2009, -1/+2Same place as most of our electricity: coal.
- flamesoftheend, on 01/08/2009, -2/+2For a second I thought that was a picture of how small Bush's brain is.
- inactive, on 01/07/2009, -3/+1(310) 217-7638
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