Here’s an interesting hybrid fuel cell that might just change the way mobile devices will be powered. This one uses methanol as fuel, basically a form of alcolhol.
What’d be way cooler is if you could power it with some beer…
Sony Corp prototyped a fuel-cell system small enough to fit in one hand. The size of the system is about 50 × 30mm, which was realized by combining a fuel cell, Li-polymer secondary battery, control circuit and so forth.
The new fuel-cell system is direct methanol type and uses methanol as fuel. Also, it is an active fuel-cell system, which controls fuel supply with a pump. The system is hybrid type with the output supplemented by a Li-polymer secondary battery. And it can deal with steeply rising peak powers of mobile devices.
Also, its use efficiency of energy is high enough that 14 hours of 1seg movie can be continuously played by general mobile phones with 10mL of methanol.
