Japan’s DoCoMo and Aquafairy have announced a recharger for cell phones that charges not with electricity but water! Called the polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC), the technology is a result of combining DoCoMo’s recharger technology with Aquafairy’s thin-film power unit technology and catalyst that could produce hydrogen from water.
This compact recharger is less than 1/4 the size and more than twice as powerful as DoCoMo’s previous methanol fuel cell recharger. It is also able to recharge a handset several times at a charging time similar to current AC adapters.
For those of you who can make sense of the diagram below, do share your knowledge.
DoCoMo is currently exhibiting the recharger at Wireless Japan 2006.
July 26th, 2006 at 7:40 pm
hahaha so they’re saying they can make hydrogen from water and then make water from hydrogen, which is a net energy change of zero…
they’re probably harnessing the energy of something other than plain water. no catalyst can facilitate a reaction uphill. assuming, of course, that this isn’t a joke. i’d love to see this thing work.
July 26th, 2006 at 9:17 pm
Basically the diagrams show the following (this is a dumbed down version):
Water is put into a reservoir where it meets a catalyst (an unkown compound in the diagram), where it is split into Hydrogen and oxygen (not shown in the diagram). The pure hydrogen is then fed to the anode (like the negative side of a battery), to which the phone, or any other device, is plugged in to. From there the hydrogen loses an electron (the e- ball-like object, which travels to the cathode, producing a charge). The hydrogen ion produced from this travels through the electrolyte solution and bonds with oxygen from the atmostphere to produce water.
Its really fairly simple, but I imagine the catalyst will have to be replaced every once and a while, so its not completely self sufficient.
November 5th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
do anyone know the catalyst which can be used for the prepration of water artificially?? pls post a reply(related subjects can also be sent)
September 30th, 2008 at 5:26 am
will this thing really works? i am quite interested on this technology…. as far as my reading is concerned PEFC uses platinum and carbon for the anode and cathode portion…. are their alternatives for platinum, which i think is a very expensive one???