Fuel cell power for your gadgets

Candace Lombardi | Dec 11, 2008

MTI Micro, a subsidiary of Mechanical Technology Incoporated, unveiled a portable charger recently that uses replaceable fuel cartridges.

MTI Micro is not the first, and hopefully won't be the last, company to go to the fuel cell for portable convenient power. (People refer to these new tries as "fuel cell gadget chargers," though to me, that seems like it refers to a charger for powering fuel cell gadgets.)

Just this past September, Medis came out with the 24-7 Power pack, a charger powered by a liquid fuel cell, for only US$40 with replacement packs for about US$20.

The MTI Micro Mobion prototype works with cartridges of the liquid fuel methanol. Each cartridge offers about 25 hours of power. When it's depleted, users just pop it out of the charger and replace it with another one.

Sounds promising, but we're still waiting to hear back from MTI Micro on the pricing of the charger and those cartridges. The company says the MTI Micro Fuel Cell Charger will be available as a product toward the end of 2009.

So, what does 25 hours of fuel cell power get you?

According to MTI Micro, you could use it to fully recharge any cell phone 10 times. You could also use it to power an MP3 player to play 10,000 songs or watch 100 hours of video.

As a person who travels a lot and tires of carrying various adapters, this is definitely something I'd want to try. As I'm generally a carry-on only traveler, it's a good thing this "liquid" gadget could be taken onboard.

Via CNET Crave | Photo credit: MTI Micro

Filed under: Future Tech
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ResearchAnalyst

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ResearchAnalyst says...
The Mobion device is puffware. The company is running out of money, and its parent company said in its recent filing that it will no longer support it or its efforts to produce this device.

The Medis product is available now, at www.savenna.com and elsewhere, and will soon be introduced - per the company - in Best Buys, Staples, Office Max, and elsewhere in the U.S. It is also available as part of an emergency kit that includes a flashlight that will run for 30 hours on one cell and includes common tips to charge portable devices. An upgraded version will recharge iPhones and other high-power-demand devices.

Dec 11, 2008 21:25