Difference between revisions of "Project:Fuel cell laptop"
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Problems: Safety hazards | Problems: Safety hazards | ||
* DMFC seem to require some heating to operate optimally (and ideally high pressure too, but most designs just don't use it and cope with reduced power) | * DMFC seem to require some heating to operate optimally (and ideally high pressure too, but most designs just don't use it and cope with reduced power) | ||
− | * Methanol is toxic, and it can | + | * Methanol is toxic, and [[Rule_Zero|it can indeed catch fire]] |
Power ? Size ? Price ? How to build ? | Power ? Size ? Price ? How to build ? |
Latest revision as of 20:26, 23 September 2013
Knowing if such a project is feasible is the matter of answering two questions:
- What maximum power can we expect of a reasonably sized and not ridiculously expensive fuel cell?
- What is the absolute minimum power consumption of something we can build and that qualifies as a modern laptop?
Fuel cell max power
Best candidate is probably direct methanol fuel celles (DMFC): high power density, no expensive catalysts, reliable technology, can drink vodka.
Problems: Safety hazards
- DMFC seem to require some heating to operate optimally (and ideally high pressure too, but most designs just don't use it and cope with reduced power)
- Methanol is toxic, and it can indeed catch fire
Power ? Size ? Price ? How to build ?
Previous work
- Interesting student project: [1]
- Nice discussion: http://www.instructables.com/answers/how-can-i-make-a-methanol-fuel-cell/
Ultra low consumption laptop
The minimum specs I want (Endy)
- 14' display
- Enough computing power, RAM and storage to run a recent Debian smoothly (don't care about the architecture as long as it is supported by debian)
- Wifi + Wired networking
- Standard I/O (nothing fancy, USB2, audio jacks and some external display)
Candidate parts
- Processor:
- Intel Atom
- AMD Geode
- VIA has some nice things too I heard
- ARM-based ? I'm clueless about those
- Motherboard: ?
- Or may as well go for a SoC
- RAM: ? most suppliers do nice ultra-low voltage RAM now
- SSD: ?
- LCD panel
- LED-backlit
- OLED would be the must here but the price tag is not nice (and the decrease in power not so huge)
- Networking (if not included in the mobo/SoC)
- Graphics (same)
Need to evaluate the power requirements of all that