Samsung: Water-powered cell phones by 2010
(Credit: Samsung)Samsung has developed a new kind of cell phone battery that's powered by water and is aiming to bring it to market by 2010.
Here's how it works: When the handset is switched on, reaction between metal and water in the phone produce hydrogen gas. This is then channeled to the fuel cell, where it reacts with oxygen in the air to generate power.
Samsung says the new battery could last for up to 10 hours. Based on four hours of use daily on average, the hydrogen cartridge would have to be replaced about every five days.
The next development would be to eliminate the hydrogen cartridge altogether and to rely only on water. While all that sounds promising, we guess it'll be hard to persuade people to adopt it en masse. After all, we've been trying to keep our phones away from water.
(Source: Crave Asia)
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Generally speaking you need to put nearly 10 times as much energy in to produce the metal as you get out (in the form of hydrogen) from the reaction with water. Then you lose half that energy converting from hydrogen back to electricity in a fuel cell. Not a huge issue in cell phones were we're talking about 20 watts-hours in for 1 watt-hour out, but for a car when you start talking about 1MWh in (~$100) for 50kWh out it's a BIG problem.
This is not a perpetual motion machine. There is no way to get energy from turning water into water.