Toshiba Testing Fuel Cells in MP3 Players

Consumer electronics company, looking towards future power sources which could be more cost effective, is testing methanol fuel cell units in prototype players.

Toshiba is playing with different power sources to run MP3 players in the future as today they announced they’d developed two prototype direct methanol fuel cell units. These units are beingtested to validate their operation.   The new fuel units, said Toshiba, have an output power of 100mW and 300mW and have been appliedto a flash-memory-based digital audio player and an HDD-based digital audio player, respectively. The 100mW is similar in shape and size to a pack of gum and delivers 35 hours on a charge, while the300mW delivers enough power to provide 60 hours on a single charge.   The design of the fuel cell units reflects current moves toward international standardization of micro fuel cells and meetsthe International Electrotechnical Commission’s draft safety standards now under review. Toshiba expects the integration of these fuel cell units to appear into commercial units in and after 2007.