Fuel cells won't help handheld devices

[Bob Russell]

In a shocker for handheld fans looking forward to some help from fuel cells, EE Times UK is reporting that fuel cells are not going to be any help after all.

Due to heat issues associated with miniaturization, the real barrier is not generating more power, but being able to use it more efficiently because of heat dissipation problems.

"As more functions are embedded in the mobile phone, the communications industry is facing a power consumption problem — and unfortunately it is one that cannot be answered by the fuel cell or other battery alternatives, according to Yrjo Neuvo, formerly executive vice president and CTO for Nokia Mobile Phones, who now serves as a technology advisor to the company."

"Smart phones are leveraging multicore architectures to get the performance they need, Neuvo observed but said fuel cells are not really any use as a mobile phone cannot consume more than 3 W to 6 W depending on its size, as it would then require active cooling. As active cooling is not an option better system and IC design must be the ways forward, as they have been before, Neuvo said."

Also, we find that while mobile communications has been moving from predominantly analog circuitry to digital circuitry, it has begun to reverse itself. The digital circuits are shrinking and the bulk of the microchips are going to be dominated now by analog RF components. The situation gets worse when we get SDR ("software defined radio" which allows it to support any radio standard simply with programming changes).

[Bob Russell]

Some more information about fuel cells and handhelds is available in this article http://www.optimizemagazine.com/arti...leId=187200900.

The conclusion is basically that there are a lot of hurdles left to overcome, espcially for handhelds. Some more immediate uses might be for recharging purposes rather than a direct power supply. In terms of the possibility of fuel cell use in mobile handheld devices, the picture still seems to not be very clear. All the article's examples, despite some of the text and the headline, are of fuel cell products that aren't really fit for direct use in handheld devices.

However they seem to indicate Toshiba and others might be still aiming at handheld fuel cells, regardless of what the Nokia advisor has indicated (and there's always the possibility that EE Times UK or myself have accidentally taken that Nokia advisor's comments out of context)....

Toshiba, for example, has been demonstrating prototypes of methanol-powered flash-memory and hard-drive digital audio players for a year or so. They're due in stores, according to reports this past fall, in 2007.

"There is a lot going on in the area with many big name electronics companies like Motorola, NEC, Hitachi and smaller start-ups working on fuel cells for mobile applications" such as laptops, cell phones, and PDAs, according to Jennifer Gangi, program director with Fuel Cells 2000, a non-profit education and outreach program that promotes fuel cells, hydrogen, all types and applications. "Plus There's a lot of activity on the military side as well, as a replacement for the heavy batteries for soldiers' equipment. Startups like Medis and MTI Micro are working on small fuel cells."

At least we're getting closer. There are some portable/mobile fuel cell products actually on sale and in use, notably from Jadoo. (Don't get your wallet out, they're not a match for consumers or most business users.) And there's at least one fuel-cell-like product targeted to be available for the last quarter of 2006, in time for the holiday season, from Medis Technologies Ltd."