A U.K.-based energy technology company plans to develop a fuel cell power source that could keep a smartphone running for a week or even longer on a single charge. Intelligent Energy revealed earlier this week that it had signed a £5.25 million ($ 7.6 million) joint development agreement for such a technology with an unnamed “emerging” smartphone original equipment manufacturer (OEM).
A fuel cell-based battery, which stores energy in the form of hydrogen, could help to eliminate some of the limitations that currently plague the main type of battery for cellphones: the lithium-ion battery, according to Intelligent Energy. In addition to lasting at most a day or two before needing a recharge, today’s smartphone batteries are also prone to overheating.
Intelligent Energy has already developed and taken to market a hydrogen fuel cell power pack for recharging smartphones off the grid. The Upp cartridge (pictured above), currently available in the U.K., is a fuel cell that provides a user around five smartphone charges and can then be exchanged for a refilled cartridge that the user must purchase.
No. 1 on Wish Lists: Better Batteries
This isn’t the first time a company has looked at using hydrogen fuel cells to power personal electronics. Last year, for example, Apple filed a patent application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for its design for a “portable and cost-effective fuel cell system for a portable computing device.”
Longer-lasting and more easily accessible power for electronics is definitely at or near the top of most device-owners’ wish lists. A survey done by Fortune at the 2015 CES in Las Vegas, for instance, found that the feature smartphone owners wanted most was “improved battery life.” In fact, 33 percent of those surveyed chose better batteries, compared to 16 percent who named the second-most desired improvement: faster processors.
In addition to its Upp cartridge, Intelligent Energy has developed a prototype smartphone with an embedded fuel cell. The company has been negotiating with a number of consumer electronics companies to license the technology.
Power Supply Hasn’t Kept Up with Demand
Intelligent Energy will work with the unnamed smartphone OEM to deliver a “tailored development and integration programme for a specific smartphone application” aimed at overcoming current limitations of lithium-ion batteries, according to the agreement announced earlier this week.
“We believe embedding fuel cell technology into portable devices provides a solution to the current dilemma of battery life and with consumers demanding more and more from their phones, battery innovation has not kept up,” Julian Hughes, acting managing director for Intelligent Energy’s consumer electronics division, said in a statement Monday. “With consumer power demands increasing and the advent of the Internet of Things making the world more connected than ever, now is the time to address the biggest limitation we have in achieving true connectivity — battery life.”
In addition to the smartphone OEM, Intelligent Energy also recently signed a commercial agreement to develop hydrogen fuel power for an unnamed drone manufacturer.
While hyrogen fuel cells are used in a variety of settings to provide a stationary source of energy, their application in transport and mobile devices hasn’t advanced as far. Some advocates of clean energy transportation, for example, have long promoted the potential benefits of the “hydrogen economy,” but the development of hydrogen-powered cars has lagged far behind that of hybrid and electric cars.
Critics often point out that hydrogen fuel cells do not actually generate power, but simply store power that must first be generated by other means. Fuel cells release stored energy by combining hydrogen with oxygen, which produces water as a waste product.
Image Credit: Upp Cartridge image via Intelligent Energy.
