Unveiled yesterday in London, the Riversimple car seats only two and runs on an open source fuel cell. Available by 2013, the car has a 240 mile range on its 1 kg hydrogen tank (equivalent to about 300mpg) and can zoom up to 50mph. The company that made the cell, Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies, says that it would be possible to lease it for about $315.00 a month. Compare that to the higher priced Honda FCX Clarity for $600.00 and the MINI E for $850.00 a month and it would appear that the company may have a hit on their hands.
Read More | Autoblog
The future operation of cell phones may be by water. Not to be outdone by Toshiba and their Methane PMP, Samsung Electro-Mechanics has come up with a micro-fuel cell and hydrogen generator that run on H2O. When the phone is turned on, the metal and water inside produce a hydrogen gas which reacts with oxygen to generate up to 3 watts of electricity. This means one can get up to 10 hours of use, about twice as long as rechargeable batteries. Although still a prototype, we are looking forward to the day when we can be rid of batteries that go down when we need our phone the most. Expect the technology to be perfected by 2010.
Read More | Fareastgizmos
One of Toshiba’s latest prototypes is a portable media player that runs on a nearly 100% methanol fuel cell. Filled by the side face of the console, it features an indicator that shows the fuel level. Vapor that is created as a byproduct simply evaporates. The OMFC can run for about 10 hours with 1 seg playback. After debuting the PMP at this year’s CEATEC 2007, Toshiba says it will be available commercially sometime next year and is working on a fuel cartridge and a notebook equipped with a cell as well.
Read More | Tech On
Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) are everywhere in today’s world. Air bag sensors, G-Tech vehicle performance systems, inkjet printers and DLP TV’s are just some of the mainstream uses of MEMS technology. The concept is, take something you know works well on a large scale, and shrink it down as much as possible. Well, MIT researchers are trying to use this technique to replace today’s concepts of personal power sources such as batteries, and more recently fuel cells, a MEMS device.
This new device is a miniature turbine engine. As with most MEMS projects, this idea is based on current “real size” technology. One of the methods employed by power plants is using large turbines to generate power for its customers. These MEMS devices will accomplish the same task, but on a much smaller scale. It will be a “Personal Power Plant” if you will. The turbines will spin at speeds of around 1.2 Million RPM (20kHz) and it has been estimated that due to the quality of the device and materials used, they should be able to achieve better efficiency numbers than the current turbines used in power plants. What does all this mean? Well, for now, not much, but for the future, this may be a step in the right direction to creating cheaper safe power for millions across the globe.
Read More | MIT