Fuel Cell Laptop Reaches Protoype Phase

No, you haven’t been shrinking—your laptop’s battery has indeed been getting bigger. As manufacturers cram more processors, fans, and ever-more powerful graphics cards into their laptops, the ability to carry four hours of juice in a lump of charged metalloids has required more and more material, and none of it very environmentally friendly.

But a new advance prototype from PolyFuel, Inc, being shown around the Valley this week appears to have solved that problem. Apparently, the machine generates power through fuel-cell technology, and charged by methanol cartridges about the size of a deck of cards. They’ve even been “approved for commercial aircraft by the various regulatory bodies around the world.”

I’ve got to say that methanol isn’t exactly an ideal fuel. It’s volatile and highly toxic, but unlike other popular volatile and toxic fuels (lithium ion batteries or gasoline, for example) methanol breaks down in to fairly benign substances. My biggest beef here is that there’s a carbon atom in that methanol molecule and it has to end up somewhere, almost certainly as carbon dioxide. 

Not only does that make this new machine a greenhouse gas emitter, but it also means you want to be extra careful using it in a tight space.