Originally published March 9 2005
NTT creates a hydrogen fuel cell for mobile phones
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Nippon Telephone and Telegraph (NTT) has developed a new hydrogen fuel cell designed for mobile phones and they hope to have it on the commercial market within three years. Their micropolymer-electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC) offers much higher energy densities than direct methanol fuel cells (DMFC), though NTT's fuel cell requires a pressurized cell. However, the PEFC produces almost three times as much electricity as the DMFC.
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT) said yesterday that it has developed a prototype fuel cell that it hopes to commercialize within three years at a size small enough to fit inside mobile phones and other portable consumer electronics devices.
The prototype is a micro polymer-electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC) that works by combining hydrogen with oxygen, generating electricity and water, and is more powerful than the direct methanol fuel cells (DMFC) now being developed by many companies, said Kazuya Akiyama, a researcher at the energy systems project at NTT's energy and environment systems laboratories.
The power density of the NTT cell -- a measure of the amount of power it can generate relative to its size -- is up to 200 milliwatts per square centimeter.
NTT calculates that to match the size of lithium ion batteries used in mobile phones, a fuel cell must have a power density of about 160 milliwatts per square centimeter or more, he said.
The hydrogen-fueled PEFC technology does have at least one disadvantage compared with DMFC technology, he said.
Methanol fuel cells can work off small, nonpressurized cartridges of the liquid, whereas hydrogen-fueled PEFCs require pressurized hydrogen gas.
NTT has designed a hydrogen storage unit that is slightly bigger than an automobile battery that can store 50 liters of hydrogen.
Building a supply and container infrastructure, creating international packaging standards and making a legal framework to allow transportation of hydrogen canisters will take about three years, a year longer than it will take to resolve similar issues with methanol, Akiyama estimated.
"The fuel canisters we are using are very heavy and we need to make them smaller and lighter, and safety is a big concern," he said.
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