With an array of entertainment options like watching a movie or surfing internet to playing games online on your cell phones, spending time alone has never been this interesting. You don’t need any body’s company to spend waiting hours by your self on your way to work or even at doc’s reception. But you certainly need some thing vital like this Ultra small Hybrid Fuel Cell from Sony. This prototype is small enough to fit in your hand and powerful to juice your cell with 10mL of methanol! This much methanol is enough to watch 14 hours of 1seg movie. It is the first time that Sony has unveiled a prototype of a practical fuel-cell system including, for example, a secondary battery and control circuit. The new fuel-cell system is direct methanol type and uses methanol as fuel.
This active fuel-cell system, which controls fuel supply with a pump, is hybrid type with the output supplemented by a Li-polymer secondary battery. It is also capable of sustaining steeply rising peak powers of mobile devices. The fuel cell’s instantaneous output can be as high as 3W.
The size of the entire fuel cell system measures roughly 50 × 30mm only, including the fuel cell, the secondary battery and some control circuits. For the fuel cells, Sony has also announced that they’ve evaluated a fullerene-type solid polymer electrolyte membrane and MEA (membrane-electrode assembly) developed with the membrane. And with all this, it’s expected that the company will get this fuel cell system materialized and commercialized soon.
