Hi Pickin,
You said "The refilling on 15 times really caught me off guard too though. I'm not sure what to make of it..."
Ya, I caught that as well. VSPC has said that "We don't make the razor, but the blade that is used with it" to parahrase. They were refering to the continual revenue stream of the razor blade Market.
My thought is that any battery whether Car,rechargeable, flashlight, etc that uses chemical reaction to create electricty eventually has to be replaced. The get corroded or the material inside the such as plates eventually lose their properties that cause that chemical reaction. So my thinking is that it must be the same with these DMFC.
SO what I am not sure is if that 15 times is to indicate that after 15 refills you must replace the fuel cell. Why would the say that unless that was the case. I the Toshiba product can run 6 hour talk time on one "Tank" of methonal before it has to be refilled. Well that would be 90 hours talk time on one fuel cell and I think it comes to over 200 hours standby time for the total of 15 refills. Which will make it wortth the cost that is good, like a rechargable battery.
So this is directly from VSPC' website decribing the tech, so IMHO it is not much different than a car battery that will have to be replaced.
How does a DMFC Work?
The heart of a fuel cell consists of catalysts for the electrochemical reaction and a special piece of plastic that can conduct protons. The technical term for this special plastic is polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) and the most common PEM used in DMFCs today is NafionTM, produced by Dupont. The most common catalysts used are PtRu alloy for the anode and Pt for the cathode.
In the fuel cell, the fuel is not burned, but rather is converted into electricity through an electrochemical process that splits methanol into protons, electrons, and carbon dioxide at the anode and then combines these protons and electrons with oxygen at the cathode to produce water. It is a very simple concept.
What do you think?
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