HANOVER, Germany -- Tourists vacationing in RVs this summer can burn up the highway while their appliances are humming along inside the Winnebago -- courtesy of a portable fuel cell.
Micro fuel-cell designers are convinced that these small-scale products will trigger a revolution in portable electronic devices and leisure activities. The results of their work may impact the market soon.
The RV energizer, known as the SFC A25, can power a motor home for four days even when used continually.
"People would not have to go to the campground to plug in for power anymore," said Manfred Stefener, CEO of Smart Fuel Cell, the company that made the fuel cell, at the Excellence in Fuel Cells Conference this week in Hanover, Germany.
The SFC A25, promoted as the world's first commercially sold methanol fuel-cell product, is already used in traffic systems and environmental sensors. Its weight -- just over 21 pounds -- includes a full 2.5-liter fuel canister of methanol.
Micro fuel-cell designers have turned to methanol -- a hazardous alcohol with a high energy density -- because pure hydrogen fuel in something like a smart briefcase or laptop docking station would likely not be allowed aboard an airplane as carry-on luggage.
The SFC A25 will be the first Smart Fuel Cell product to enter the commercial market, but it may not represent the most important technological advance coming from the company.
Last year Smart Fuel Cell signed an agreement with Medion, the largest laptop seller in Germany, to begin joint development of a methanol-based power supply for computer notebooks and other portable electronic devices. The prototype is called the Energy Docking Station.
Its certification and clearance to travel by air are not yet finalized.
"Very similar products are allowed in the cabin today such as perfume, even in glass containers, cigarette lighters with lithium-ion batteries." said Jens Mueller, head of the research and development department at Smart Fuel Cell. "We expect to obtain clearance without major difficulties."
The Energy Docking Station sits under a notebook and supplies it with electricity three times longer than a conventional battery. The catch: You cannot plug into the wall to recharge. When the powering station has consumed all its fuel, the methanol fuel cartridge must be replaced. Medion will begin marketing the docking station to the public in 2004.
Having replacement cartridges on hand is not an obstacle according to William Acker, president and CEO of MTI MicroFuel Cells, another company that hopes to profit from manufacturing miniature power supplies.
"Obviously if you're carrying all engine and no fuel in your car, you can't get anywhere," he said. "It's the same thing with fuel cells."
If Acker has his way, you will find a fuel cell in your pocket before you find it under the hood of your car. An alteration in the classic design of a direct methanol fuel cell, or DMFC, has enabled MTI MicroFuel to make notable progress in the area of miniaturization.
Typical DMFC architecture involves looping methanol fuel through the device at specific concentrations with pumps and sensors to ensure that the energy-providing reaction takes place properly. While this arrangement makes the fuel-delivery system precise, the various monitoring components require considerable space.
MTI MicroFuel has engineered a way to bring concentrated methanol directly into the fuel cell and in doing so eliminated the need for many of the pumps and sensors normally required. The new design also liberates the water flow within the fuel cell and enables it to function in any orientation.
The company already has a prototype the size of a deck of cards that can fit in your pocket -- but it will never hit store shelves. MTI MicroFuel’s researchers have not yet reduced the size of their fuel cell enough to integrate it into a mobile phone and must use a wire to connect the two pieces of equipment.
"A fuel cell attached to a phone with a tether is not a product to us," said Acker. MTI MicroFuel will wait until it can scale down the technology further before marketing it for mobile phones.
Still, with the capacity to provide four to five times the amount of energy as a normal mobile-phone battery, this particular fuel cell has a number of people talking, including President Bush. He used the small powering device to place a call last month at a White House event on new technologies.
Meanwhile, researchers in southeast France believe that air-bag technology has the potential to create an explosion in the fuel-cell industry.
"We worked with people at the SNPE, who deal with the pyrotechnics inside air bags, to develop a new way to deliver hydrogen," said Didier Bloch. Bloch serves as director of technical research at the Department of Technology for New Energy within The French Atomic Energy Commission, a public research administration created soon after World War II. SNPE is a French industrial group that focuses on "energetic materials" and chemicals.
Bloch explains that the same explosive setup that releases nitrogen gas to fill an air bag in a car accident can be scaled down and applied to release hydrogen, which in turn undergoes a chemical reaction inside the fuel cell to give energy.
This new process converts 10 percent of the original mass into usable hydrogen and is approximately five times more efficient than other systems that use methyl hydrides. The goal is to produce a credit-card-size cartridge with numerous pockets of hydrogen waiting to deliver on demand.
"The idea is that you would buy a hydrogen fuel card just like you buy a public phone card," Bloch said. "The hydrogen fuel bags are initiated when the device needs it."
The French researchers had to invent two other devices to complement the technology behind their hydrogen fuel-card concept. They engineered a silicon plate about the size of a compact disk with a series of dime-size fuel cells.
Their experimental system also required a specific type of lithium battery to capture and store the energy of the fuel card. When the researchers discovered that this sort of battery did not yet exist, they decided to design it themselves.
With this advance in micro fuel cells, flashing a card to "charge it" may take on a whole new meaning.
