A small fuel cell to get anywhere with the computer
2005/10/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria
UltraCell presents a small fuel cell filled with 1.3 kilos of weight, with methanol as fuel and a power of 45 watts per day. Enough to feed a laptop that consumes only half a liter of methanol a day and is also silent.
Other households have also marketed fuel cells from methanol, but they seem less efficient. The key to the efficiency of the UltraCell stack is in the extraction of hydrogen from methanol, so it is basically a hydrogen cell.
The methanol reaction to hydrogen occurs at 280 °C. Therefore, the main challenge has been to properly isolate this tool to be useful. This, logically, has been the price of the apparatus and, for the moment, the only purchaser will be the American army.
