Real laptop fuel cell power breakthrough?

Some call them the holy grail, promising extended life for laptop PCs and other portable consumer electronics.

Yet after years of hype, the fuel cell systems to power laptops that have started to emerge have been like most first generation technology products - awkward and falling short of expectations. Attempts to date, like Samsung's fuel cell laptop dock, news of which started to break in Korea last week, have been criticized as still too big and noisy.

A company just outside of Seattle thinks it's got the big breakthrough. Neah Power Systems claims to have figured out how to fit a high powered, long life fuel cell into the battery cavity of a laptop.

And to get there, it says it's re-engineering how small direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs) have traditionally been designed.

The biggest shortcoming, the company says, has been the proton exchange membrane, or PEM.

"PEMs have certain basic limitations," Paul Abramowitz, Neah Power president and CEO, described to the Cleantech Group. "They're not strong. They degrade. Changes in humidity of the air affects their performance. And they use a two dimensional surface, when power is directly proportional to the membrane's surface area."

The secret to higher power and smaller form factors, he said, is Neah's porous silicon-based membrane, which "provides 50 to 100 times the surface area in the same space."

Liquid electrolyte used in the Neah prototypes oozes through the porous silicon - 400 microns thick, compared to the 10 microns of an average PEM - and interacts with more reactants, producing a higher power density, the company claims. The company has received a number of patents, the latest of which was just announced this week.

With the introduction of graphical interfaces, the PC industry used to be microprocessor speed-constrained. Abramowitz says power is now the gating issue for laptops, which, by extension, now drives the whole PC industry, given that more than 50% of new PCs now sold are portables.

"We're an Intel Capital company; I was at a recent Intel Capital CEO summit, and virtually the entire topic was power. People want a longer lasting portable PC. They want latest features, like Wi-Fi and WiMAX, but the usable lifetime of the portable PC keeps going down. People want these features, but they also want the portability."

And they appear willing to pay for it. A study by Intel shows consumers will pay up to 30% more for a portable PC that lasts 3 hours longer, Abramowitz said.

Fuel cell companies not targeting automotive (see the Cleantech Group's coverage of fuel cell vehicles) or power plant applications (see HydroGen prepping massive fuel cell generators) seem inevitably involved with the U.S. military. Neah is no exception, having received $1,750 in Congressional appropriations in 2006 for R&D, with $1,350 coming in 2007. And there's a reason for that, said Abramowitz.

"Today's batteries, from the data I've read, will only be able to power the warrior of the future and his next-generation equipment for 150 minutes. That's a pretty short battle. The military has therefore targeted power as a key area it needs to address."

An industry analyst contacted by the Cleantech Group said he's impressed with Neah's approach.

"The direct methanol fuel cell (or DMFC) is the current industry standard for micro fuel cells. Neah Power is the only company I know of with DMFC technology that does not require a PEM. In the universe of DMFCs, Neah is unique," said Steve Ebling of Fuel Cell Stocks.

Neah is still in the prototype phase. It anticipates shipping some some products in 2008 for military applications. It expects to ship in real volume starting in 2009 if everything goes as planned.

The company was initially VC funded with money from Alta Partners, Frazier Technology Ventures, Castile Ventures, WestAM and Intel Capital.

It went public early in 2006 through a reverse merger into a public shell, received a bridge loan early this year, and is looking at bringing in new money, according to Abramowitz.

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