Fuel for Thought
The active ingredient in windshield wiper fluid could soon change your life.
I'm not talking about cleaning bird doo off your windshield so you don't go careening off a cliff. I'm talking about using portable fuel cells, which are now under development as a power source for laptops, PDAs, cell phones, and other portable electronics.
Illustration: Gordon Studer
Fuel cells generate power from the chemical reaction between a hydrogen-containing fuel and oxygen. Among many hydrogen-rich fuels is methanol, a wood alcohol often used in windshield wiper fluid. Methanol is the hydrogen source of choice for most portable fuel cell products currently being developed by Hitachi, Toshiba, Fujitsu, and others.
Your gadgets could run for hours (if not days) longer than they can on available batteries, according to Fuel Cells 2000. Sounds awesome--except when I imagine airlines permitting cell phone use in flight, and fuel cell technology enabling the Talkative Tom next to me to blather nonstop from San Francisco to New York.
Though methanol is flammable, advocates of the technology say fuel cells are safe because they typically use less than 24 percent methanol mixed with water. Hence, they present no more danger on an aircraft than, say, a mini-bottle of vodka.
Laptops should be the first target market. The current best guess is that portable fuel cell cartridges will begin appearing later this year but won't be widely available until 2006.
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