On Thu, 4 Feb 1999, Robert Paris wrote: > OK.... That wasn't as sucessful as I'd hoped. Doesn't anyone know how to > MAKE a fuel cell? Just a small one. To power an LED for experimental purposes, > whatever. Any ideas? To make a good fuel cell is a Black Art. There's a lot of issues that you can learn about by making a few web searches. And if you want a fuel cell for a *wearable*, you're going to be sorely disappointed. Fuel cells have scaling problems too. A fuel cell which generates enough power for a wearable would be pretty damn big, with most of the size and weight being the high-pressure container for the hydrogen. And the hydrogen needs to be delivered into the fuel cell at high pressure too. Those fuel cell designs which dodge the problem of pressurized hydrogen do it by using other fuels (like methane) which are heat-cracked into hydrogen. But that requires the fuel cell to be *damn* hot, like 650 degrees Celsius hot. I remember reading about some research group (at MIT I think) which fit a very small gas/alcohol turbine generator (with fuel!) into a laptop battery's form factor. I forget how long it lasted before running out of gas though. But that's a solution which might scale better for a wearable, if you're willing to walk around with a canister of gasoline strapped to your back. Hey, now there's an idea. We could have a combination gas-powered laptop & flamethrower! John Flanagan -- Subcription/unsubscription/info requests: send e-mail with subject of "subscribe", "unsubscribe", or "info" toWear-Hard Mailing List Archive (searchable): http://wearables.ml.org
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