14 DAY TRIAL // In a press release published yesterday, the company MTI Micro revealed that it would begin mass production of methanol fuel cells of handheld and portable electronic devices somewhere this year, so that by the beginning of 2009 they would become available for purchase. The company plans to replace all lithium ion batteries with fuel cell in portable electronic devices, unlike other fuel cell manufacturers around the world that experiment with fuel cells destined for transportation vehicles.
"There is still one wire left in portable devices today, and that's the charging wire. And the battery system is not efficient at all. You talk for three hours on you mobile phone and then you have to charge if for half an hour," says MTI Micro CEO, Peng Lim.
A fuel cell device should be able to provide double the power produced by a battery, without modifying the size of the pack in any way. Thus, while a lithium-ion powered digital camera is able to take about 1,400 to 2,200 photographs before running out of power, a fuel cell battery should provide enough energy to take 2,800 to 4,000 photos.
And best of all, the fuel cell doesn't require time to recharge. Just add some more methanol and the fuel cell cartridge is ready for operation. Methanol fuel cells work much in the same way as the hydrogen ones. Oxygen reacts with the fuel in a catalytic environment by exchanging electrical charges through a membrane. Water is the only byproduct of the reaction, although there are also some very small quantities of carbon dioxide gas.
Nonetheless, methanol fuel cells have some slight disadvantages as well, mainly because methanol is a very flammable substance.
"Methanol is the most energetic of the materials with the least amount of trouble for making a product. You don't have to pressurize it, store it in cold temperatures, or make a powder of it -like you need with hydrogen - which you then have to mix with water to get a reaction. Methanol contains 5,000 watt hour energy per liter," said George Relan, vice president of corporate development at MTI.
The byproduct water has been eliminated out of the fuel cell through a pluming system, but the recharging device has already been developed.