Purdue University creates new method to drive fuel cells for portable electronics

September 1, 2005 Engineers at Purdue University have developed a new way of producing hydrogen for fuel cells to automatically recharge batteries in portable electronics, such as notebook computers, and eliminate the need to use a wall outlet. The findings were presented last Sunday (August 28) during the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society in Washington, D.C., and also will be detailed in a peer-reviewed paper to appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Combustion and Flame. The researchers developed the new method earlier this year and envision a future system in which pellets of hydrogen-releasing material would be contained in disposable credit-card-size cartridges. Once the pellets were used up, a new cartridge would be inserted into devices such as cell phones, personal digital assistants, notebook computers, digital cameras, handheld medical diagnostic devices and defibrillators.

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