The Green Optimistic

Yet another cool invention from Samsung. After they did break many European and American markets, they plan to knock out those solar power fanatics, by using water as a power source. Yes, you heard right. They intend to make fuel cell batteries that can power anything you can use in your pocket (cell phone, radio, mp3, etc). In fact, it’s not an invention in the full sense of meaning. It’s merely an innovation, an effort to bring the fuel cell technology to the market.

The working principle is this: water reacts with a metal, produces hydrogen, hydrogen is fed to a fuel cell, which produces electricity. The power is impressive, it can make 3W of electricity! Your cellphone uses maximum 2W when it’s emitting your voice on air.

Now, I suspect that the precious secret metal is nothing else than aluminum, since aluminum+lye+water truly gets you hydrogen. I’ll try to make a simple fuel cell like those band aid ones to see if I can manage to get electricity at least to power a LED!

Samsung says that the project will be finished by 2010. They already have a working prototype, but they want to improve it and make it safe enough before releasing it to the energy-hungry market.