Just ran across this and I must say it is a cool product.
I wouldn’t buy one at the $149 retail price but at the $79 kickstarter price,
I just might give it a go.
Can be fueled with lighter fluid or camping fuel.
One refill will charge approximately 11 iphones (not sure what mah this equals).
Check it out.
Very cool. The microtubular fuel cell is interesting (the device is too, but the recharge time had me googling), recharges to full power in 3 seconds (and thats enough to recharge 11 iPhones)?
Why is it we cant use these fuel cells? Voltage? Amps? Cost?
I am a bit skeptical about this.
- most of their videos and text is poor advertisement they don’t say anything how exactly is it working or revealing any other details about the product
- if this were viable option it would already be exploited, big manufacturers like Panasonic or Samsung can pour millions of $ for R&D and can produce thousands of pieces per day (if not hour) also they have hundreds of researchers all over the world.
The final product is scheduled to come at the end of 2015 and they started developing it in 2008! So ~7 years from scratch to final product! Samsung has capacity to do that in 1-2 years but they did not do it, why?
Fuel cells were praised as promising energy conversion system for a long time now, but the did not deliver yet and I doubt that Panasonic would invest gazillion of $ into making largest factory for Lithium based cells if there was a chance to replace them with something better like fuel cells in near future.
Seriously, I’m ready for a fuel-cell powered flashlight :bigsmile:
Recharging = refueling. It sounds like it runs off of short (1-3 carbons) unsaturated hydrocarbons. In other words methane (natural gas), butane or propane. It looks like it refuels like a butane lighter.
As to why we don’t use these fuel cells, well, they say it has a power output of 2W, continuous or $75/W at the retail price. A typical 18650 based single-cell powerbank can deliver 5W continuous, (until discharged, obviously), for less than $4/W. The average smartphone needs 5W for full-speed charging. The average iPad needs about twice that.
(update, they claim 10W peak power. I wonder how long it can deliver that for) If I were designing this thing, I’d probably add a smallish lithium cell as a buffer so that people could get the recharge rates they expect. On the other hand, its perfectly fine for an overnight charger, and you probably wouldn’t want it operating and recharging the lithium cell while it was in a bag or pocket since it produces heat and water and CO2 exhaust.
Positioning. They aren’t selling this to truely geeky people, just people who like the latest and greatest with “conspicuous conservation” tendencies.
One could fill several books on this topic. At the heart of it, though, it probably helps to understand that the calculation is quite different for an incumbent and an upstart. The incumbent will often have all sorts of stuff cooking in labs for years, but they don’t commercialize it because of conflicts with their existing profitable businesses. An upstart doesn’t have that consideration, but they also don’t have the resources to throw a big team at commercializing something, and even if they did, it might not be the most capital efficient approach.
Sure, it could be more, but it is good enough to be useful. The real questions, I think are 1) Can they deliver on their promises in a timely manner 2) Can they sell enough of these things to drive economies of scale and push prices down.
My guess on #1 is probably yes, that the technology development is done, and the product development is well underway. The kickstarter is a way for them to get paid while promoting the product to the type of people who will probably buy the first gen device and/or recommend it to other like-minded people. #2 is less clear.
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As I said before, Panasonic can be reasonably confident in a return on their battery factory investment, and the numbers I gave in my previous post explain why. Even if fuel cells will compete with batteries in the longer run, there is still a lot of money to be made making li-ion cells.
Despite the hype and disappointment, the niches in which fuel cells are commercially viable seem to be slowly expanding. As long as there is progress on those fronts, there will be a reason to invest in the technology.
Consider too, both Honda and Toyota will have fuel cell cars on the market in the next year or so. The first generation will probably be like the first gen prius, a chance to get paid while working out the kinks on commercializing a new technology. The manufacturers may take a bit of a loss on each vehicle, but expect it to pay off in the long term.
I read it again this time more slowly and it says it does 11 iPhones on one refill, not one 3 second charge of the Kraftwerk does 11 iPhones. Nor does it say as I initially thought, that the microtubular storage cells are fully charged in 3 seconds of burning butane. It appears to be saying it takes 3 seconds to refill the gas chamber. Im guessing you would need to cycle through several recharges of the Kraftwerks microtubular metallic fuel cells to fully charge a phone, and the amount of gas in the gs chamber is enough to do 11 phones. Makes a tad more sense. Fully charging its own cells in 3 seconds and that being able to charge 11 phones seemed a tad hopeful.
Still cool.
They are very vague on the details, i would only spend money i am happy to throw away
They are indeed extremely vague on details. For example, it says “standard gas.” What does that mean? Gasoline? Butane?
Here’s the fuel cell I want—maybe someday. I’ve been reading about folks using these to augment solar power for the winter months. Electrical systems for example on Puget Sound can electrolyze water and store the hydrogen in tanks towards the end of summer, when there’s surplus power or the system is idle. That way with solar and fuel cells in combination, a home could be completely self-sufficient year round. I doubt the people building these systems will ever justify the price of the equipment, but it’s still pretty exciting.
I have found that when companies invent their own terminology to describe existing products its usually a bad sign
I’m still waiting for my damn rocket car. But I’ll settle for cold fusion.
We all want our own Mr Fusion :bigsmile:
Just imagine how many lumens we could then unleash
Fuel cells are typically continuous flow devices, no cycling involved. When charging, gas flows into the fuel cell, current and exhaust flows out.
Not a novel idea, thermoelectric generator
Based off the Seebeck effect
http://www.biolitestove.com/products/campstove/
Not the small pocket sized one is interesting…but too expensive for my tastes
Butane. 
They are German guys and would probably never think of anyone calling something ‘gas’ that is liquid at room temperature, like gasoline. 
Butane is the gas used in lighters over here, and that is what the guy in the video is holding in his hand. Maybe they need an international marketing guy or something.
(sorry, can’t get your nickname to show correctly, there has to be a trick to incluce the ‘-’ )
With the difference that the fuel cell has easily an order of magnitude higher system efficiency.
They claim about 56Wh out of 40g butane, which would be about 10% efficiency. That’s really not to shabby and quite believable. The 2 year lifetime expectance does sound plausible, too.
They are a spin-off of the Fraunhofer Society, an internationally reputable research organisation.
Not a couple of kids making wild claims what they can tinker together in their basement.
So I guess it is quite likely that there is some substance to their claims.
I personally find it quite attractive for over-night charging while bag-packing.
If the claims are true, one fueled up device (200g, including 40g Butane) can supply as much energy as the nominal energy content of 5 3Ah 18650 cells (~230g without charger)
With a refill bottle, the weight advantage rises quite a lot. One of those typical 300ml/180g refill bottles would hold the nominal energy of ~23 18650 Cells.
The energy of 28 cells in that form factor at about a pound system weight is really awesome if you can live with the fact that you get your energy rather slowly.
I’d really like to know how performance varies with ambient temperature.
Waiting for a butane-gas powered flashlight
3*MT-G2 with 5000 OTF Lumen and 10 hours runtime…
That would be fantastic, and yet so many people are all excited about running CARS on 18650’s! LOL
All the reasons in the ad for this fuel cell are also good reasons to run cars on fuel or perhaps some day on fuel cells.
Seems like they spent more money on the ad than R&D.
Sure, you can power anything with a single USB output. H)
Transfer - logical fallacy
Kickstarter makes me sad.