Janet Rae-Dupree Knight-Ridder Newspapers
1516 Words
9461 Characters
03/15/98
Sunday Gazette-Mail
P3C
News
(Copyright 1998)
Oops.
You forgot to plug in your cell phone last night and now that crucial
call you were expecting this morning can't get through. It will take
hours to recharge the battery enough to talk for any length of time.
Wouldn't it be nice if you could just give that phone an instant shot
of power?
Researcher Bob Hockaday believes that in another year or two, a shot
of pure grain alcohol should be all it takes.
By slapping a small glass vial of methanol and water into a miniature
fuel cell, Hockaday predicts that tomorrow's mobile phone users will
be able to enjoy up to 100 hours of uninterrupted talking without ever
having to rely on an electrical outlet. He foresees laptop computers
operating continuously on a jigger of methanol, and pagers buzzing
away on a thimbleful of alcohol.
Whether Hockaday is right is far from certain. Other fuel cell
researchers openly doubt his claims. Nevertheless, his infectious
enthusiasm and obvious technical know-how are drawing attention and
investment - proof that even in a skeptical age there is power in
compelling ideas.
Hockaday's work is also another piece in a growing body of evidence
that fuel cell technology is coming of age.
"People badly want something like this,'' Hockaday said. "It's an itch
that needed to be scratched.''
Fuel cells don't burn fuel
Unlike batteries, which store electrical energy and have a limited
life span, fuel cells produce electricity through a chemical reaction
that can be sustained as long as such fuels as hydrogen, alcohol,
gasoline or natural gas are supplied. Because the cells don't burn the
fuel, their emissions are relatively benign, consisting mostly of
water vapor and - in the case of Hockaday's devices - carbon dioxide.
Until recently, fuel cells were blocky, heavy contraptions. They
powered the Gemini and Apollo space flights and today keep the space
shuttle warm and well-lighted.
Automotive engineers intent on building tomorrow's environmentally f
riendly cars have begun to turn to fuel cells as a possible solution.
Even larger fuel cells may hold the key to producing "clean''
electricity; four garage-sized devices were used in a 1996 technology
demonstration to convert natural gas into enough electricity to power
2,000 Santa Clara, Calif., homes.
For nearly 18 years Hockaday's fuel cell dreams have been on a much
smaller scale. He never wanted to produce massive powerhouses. He
wanted to find a way to power small consumer electronics gadgets
without having to depend on unreliable batteries.
Traditional design bulky
Conventional fuel cell design wisdom, however, dictated that the
devices would forever be too bulky for such applications.
In a traditional hydrogen fuel cell, there are two electrodes - a fuel
electrode, referred to as the anode, and an oxygen electrode, called
the cathode - sandwiched around an electrolyte. A metal catalyst on
the fuel side breaks the hydrogen down into negatively charged
electrons and positively charged ions. The hydrogen ions move through
the electrolyte to the oxygen side, where a second catalyst has been
breaking down double-molecules of oxygen into single molecules. The
charged oxygen molecules hook onto the hydrogen, forming water vapor,
and attracting even more of the hydrogen across the electrolyte. That
motion of hydrogen from one side to the other produces electricity.
But, Hockaday notes, traditional fuel cell design requires gaskets and
seals and separators that are shoehorned together and squeezed into a
mechanical stack. It is an effective but bulky design.
What if, he reasoned, the cells could be miniaturized and "printed''
side-by-side on a plastic sheet like an integrated circuit? All the
fuel electrodes could be printed on one side and all the oxygen
electrodes could be opposite them. Precise, microscopic holes could be
used to feed the fuel past a catalyst and into the thin electrolyte
between the two sides.
For several years, first as a graduate student and later as an X-ray
analyst at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Hockaday pursued the idea
in the basement of his New Mexico home. He began to study nucleatore,
a material made by irradiating plastics with fusion fragments to etch
tiny holes. The material allows for such precise holes that it is used
to filter blood.
Three years ago he believed he was on the verge of a breakthrough. He
quit his job - his wife's salary as a physicist at Los Alamos lab
supports the family of five - and devoted himself full time to making
tiny fuel cells.
Hockaday's device uses a catalyst to break down alcohol, usually
methanol, into carbon dioxide and hydrogen. The charged hydrogen ions
move across the electrolyte to the oxygen electrode, carrying current
with them.
Migration control is key
He needed to figure out how to prevent the methanol from migrating
across the electrolyte before the catalyst had a chance to do its job.
A researcher at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Eugene Smotkin,
published a paper in 1995 showing that foil made of palladium - a type
of metal - could block that migration without interfering with the
catalyst.
But Smotkin warned that palladium created a new problem - it blocked
much of the current flow that would make the fuel cell useful.
Smotkin stopped researching palladium 18 months ago after concluding
that the poor current flow problem could not be solved. He doubts that
Hockaday - who has published no scientific papers on his fuel cell
work - has managed to solve the problem, either.
"This technology he's talking about is very immature,'' Smotkin said.
"This is not a breakthrough that will affect the quality of life
within the next five years, and I'm being very generous when I say
five years. He is not going to be running a cell phone next year with
this.''
Hockaday, who last discussed his technology with Smotkin several
months ago, believes that he has indeed solved the problem. A
laboratory prototype produces about 0.4 volts per cell, he said. By
stringing together 10 to 15 cells in an array, he can get the 4- to
6-volt output that cell phones need.
"Our proof will be that we make a product,'' he said. "We're using
palladium, but it's not a foil form. We're about 800 times thinner
than that.''
He said he decided not to submit his work to any scientific journals
for business reasons.
"We're trying to produce a commercial product,'' he said. "If you tell
everybody exactly what's in there, why bother going out and trying to
sell it? They say 'Prove it,' and I say 'Why should I?' Are they
going to pay me for this?''
$1 million bankroll
* At least one investor already has. Marvin Maslow, a former banker and
president of technology-incubator Manhattan Scientifics Inc. of New
York, has committed $1 million to turning Hockaday's prototype into a
product within two years.
At a press conference in January, Maslow handed Hockaday the first of
two $500,000 checks intended to develop the prototype into a
production model. Hockaday's fledgling Energy Related Devices company
- which will receive royalty payments from Manhattan Scientifics under
the agreement with Maslow - has begun moving out of Hockaday's
basement and into an old animal clinic the company leased from a local
economic development incubator.
Hockaday has also gotten support from his former employer, Los Alamos
National Laboratory, which signed a cooperative research and
development agreement that lets him use lab equipment to test
materials. The lab's civilian and industrial technologies program
office steered him to Maslow.
Manhattan Scientific is negotiating with several battery and cell
phone companies, Hockaday said, but no firm commitments are expected
for several months.
Cells on paper-thin sheet
Hockaday notes that his initial fuel cell product will not power a
cell phone directly. Instead, a 10-centimeter-square plastic sheet of
fuel cells about as thick as a piece of paper will convert tiny vials
of methanol into electricity that will then be stored in a 2-ounce
lead acid battery inside the phone.
As the phone requires electricity, it will take the energy from the
battery, which will be continuously recharged by the fuel cell array.
Users would be able to buy inexpensive six-packs of methanol vials
that could be dropped into the device, much like loading an ink-jet
cartridge, every few weeks. Hockaday says he can improve the fuel cell
design over the next few years so that a battery no longer will be
needed.
Even with a battery as part of the system, however, he believes the
resulting telephone will stay charged for 41 days, allow a user to
talk for 100 hours, refuel in less than a minute and last up to 20
years. That's 10 times as long as the conventional nickel-cadmium
batteries used in today's cell phones.
"The proof always is in the pudding, but what he has announced so far
addresses a commercial area that is hungry for new and better
energy-providing products,'' said Bob Rose, executive director of Fuel
Cells 2000, a non-profit group that promotes advanced energy
technologies. "It's still open whether he has the better mouse trap,
but if he succeeds I think the industry will support it with
enthusiasm.''
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