What other Canadian company makes hydrogen electrolyzers?

Why use hydrogen to power a bike light? Just hook one of those tire generator things to it and you will never have to recharge or refill.

From the Angstrom site:
"We envision a multitude of refueling options, for example portable and disposable cartridges, home and office based refueling as well as refueling kiosks in retail locations."

Disposable cartridges? [gasp]

Let's see: purchase a 1W power source, then dispose of the spent cartridges. Do this all the while the rider is producing 200W. Does this make any sense at all?!
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It is a protoype ready to enter commercial development. The purpose of prototyping should be understood in a broader context. Fuel cell powered vehicles have no elbow room for engineering and rather severe operating limitations because of customer expectations of power and speed. At the micro-end, terrorism concerns have recently blocked entry of power chargers for airline and train travel. About all that is left (for the time being) to prototype is what you see here.

What is better: to toss away a pair of toxin filled, non-recyclable AA batteries every 4 hours or a simple, non-toxic, fully recyclable steel cyclinder that lasts 20 hours?

Jilted citizen said it, and i'll say it too... why bother with this when you can attach a dynamo generator to your wheel and use some of that kinetic energy to power your light?
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How much is the total weight of a dynamo compared to the fuel cell light system? If weights are comparable, then dynamo is more sensible based on reliability. If dynamo is significantly heavier (and I bet it is with the copper coil and magneto insert plus gear, etc) H2 system has an advantage for those who want to lightweight.

But where do you tank up? And where does your refill station get the hydrogen from?

With the technology available today and in the forseeable future, it takes a lot of energy to produce hydrogen for use in a fuel cell. That energy has to come from somewhere -- and if it's a clean source like solar or wind, why not just use that directly in batteries or ultracapacitors instead of losing a bunch of efficiency by putting hydrogen in the middle?

Read more about it in Tesla Motor's white paper on well to wheel efficiency: http://www.teslamotors.com/media/white_papers/The21stCenturyElectricCar.pdf

They obviously chose automotive applications as the example, but the principles are the same.
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If you look over the website you'll see that they offer H2 sourcing and distribution for bicycle races and events.

Converting the H2 to light is an extremely efficient and benign process with a micro fuel cell. Compare the environmental burdens of making batteries and of operating and recycling them at end of life with making a cyclinder, deliver tube and hydrogen and you will have the answer to your other question. The comparison must include a life cycle inventory of the efficiency of charging a battery from an electrical generation stations locate dhundreds of miles distant, versus "charging" a hydrogen cyclinder.

"How much is the total weight of a dynamo compared to the fuel cell light system? If weights are comparable, then dynamo is more sensible based on reliability. If dynamo is significantly heavier (and I bet it is with the copper coil and magneto insert plus gear, etc) H2 system has an advantage for those who want to lightweight."
If you can't handle a pound or two while riding then maybe you shouldn't be on a bike. If weight is a big convern use a LED with a small battery.
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Good point. A LED/small battery system is the winner for all around superiority if running a headlight alone is the basis: especially in a weight constrained race.

If the comparison started with the much larger "charging system," like the one portrayed below the fold, and the functions of comparison included running a headlight, plus charging a cell phone, and possibly running other electronics, I think we'd agree that the micro-fuel cell, H2 powered system would have improved odds to be the best solution all around.

While I did criticize Angstrom's "vision" of disposable hydrogen cartridges ("disposable" not, in fact, being synonymous with "recyclable"), I don't think these comments should become a shooting gallery where we pick off every product, prototype, or idea, nitpicking the minutae.

We've been around TH long enough to know not to wait in rapt anticipation for a silver bullet--all of these technologies are imperfect and many, especially those that are hydrogen-based, face huge obstacles of infrastructure, but they are forward-oriented and worth exploring and developing. We should be encouraged to see *beta* applications coming to fruition and ultimately to market. We are intelligent people who care about positive change, so let us offer critiques that are not snide, but constructive--critiques that illuminate extant weaknesses and give guidance to the developing institution as to what features people care about most.

In this case, Angstrom can take away from our posts that a bicycle light will perhaps not be the most popular application of their hydrogen fuel cell/cartridge system--that there are other economical and environmentally sound alternatives to which Treehuggers and cyclists may be rather attached. What nobody has disparaged, though, is the capacity of these fuel cells to recharge (power?) cell phones, PDAs, portable music devices, and the like. In the interest of positivity, here are some things that I like about Angstrom's offering: portability (beyond the practical reach of solar power), long life-cycle (as long as those cartridges can be refilled many many times before down[re]cycling, and the speed of refueling ("only minutes" sounds much better than than the hours it takes for just a pair of NiMHs).

Why this is interesting is that it brings the next step very close - imagine an electric assist for your bicycle like Bionx. But instead of a battery pack that is kind of heavy and bulky and takes 3-4 hours to recharge, imagine if you could just top off the hydrogen container that is inside the frame of your bike?

You could probably get the same range as the Bionx lithium-ion battery for a fraction of the weight, and if and when hydrogen refueling stations are avaialbe, nearly instantly refuel the assist for another 30-40 miles of travel.
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You rock peteathome. If I headed a team of designers I'd want you at as group facilitator, no question!!! (If any industry types are looking on, his email address is right here.)

A good time to set up a hydrogen distribution franchise that operates out of the back of small step vans which also sell water bottle refills, inner tubes, organic food, suntan lotion etc. Each van broadcasts it's ground coordinates in real time when open for business and while enroute to next stop. Customers monitor and route plan based on their own H2 powered GIS systems, to enable fill up in timely manner. GO for it.

Hydrogen will stay problematic for cars until we start going ultralight (only that will allow us to use smaller fuel cells and smaller hydrogen tanks, making it practical and more cost-effective).

But bikes are already very light and efficient, so a small electric assist powered by hydrogen would indeed be more practical. Good thinking, Pete.

Looking at the manufactuer's site, I see that their generator is a 1 watt generator. That's pretty cool - a microgenerator. Although you can bundle these together for more power, something like the Bionic bicycle assist needs several hundred watts, at least for peak power. It's possible something like 100 watts or so would do, with a battery/ultra-high capicitor supplying the peak power needed and also for storage during the regenerative phase that Bionx supports.

Are there any reasonably compact fuel cells available in this power range? Anything approaching affordability?

(BTW- the reason I like BionX is that the wheel motor only weights 7.7 to 8.8 lbs, depending on the assist motor power. So it is still a bike in weight and still very bikable even if you run out of battery)

If you want one watt of power on a bicycle, you should use a generator. I did a project in college where we built a generator powered taillight that ran off of a one watt motor. You couldn't even tell it was on the bike. A typical bike rider puts out about 100 watts and a performance bike rider will be 200+, so one watt is nothing.

No need to refine hydrogen, package hydrogen, build containers for hydrogen, ship hydrogen containers, and run them in fuel cells just to get one watt of power.

bike generators have been used for at least 80 years. However, the cheaper ones are inefficient and unreliable, and many have trouble with slipping in the rain.

The best are the hub generators, but there are pretty pricey. Most bike generators put out 3 Watts - to power a small headlight and a taillight. It takes more than twice the input power to get this output (they are around 40% efficient), so it IS somewhat noticable when it is on. But nothing major, more like going up a slight slope.

One reason they went out of fashion is that the typical 2 watt incandescent headlamp that these generators could run was too dim for many applications. People wanted more powerful 6 or 10 watt lamps. Plus the lights dim when you are going slow and go out all together when you stopped, say waiting to make a left turn in an intersection, a bad time not to have a light.

Price was the other reason. A cheap, less efficient but reliable "bottle" generator that works by rolling on the tire sidewall currently runs about $60. A more efficient one runs $180. A hub generator even more.

The new LED headlamps are changing the power needs and I think generators, with standby capacitors to keep the lights on when stopped, may be of interest again to bicyclists.

Back to fuel cells - As I said before, my interest is whether they can power assist motors for bikes. I think small assist motors may open up bicycling for longer distanct transport for some bicyclists. Say you have to commute 30 miles round trip to work, or you want to go 60 miles to the beach. Assist motors give you a bit more speed and flatten out the hills. So now you can average nearly 20 mph rather than the 13 mph I typically average on long trips. And not use up all your energy. Li-ion battery based systems are already pretty good, but the batteries are a bit heavy, the range is a little too short, and they take too long to charge.

I just did a search for compact 100 watt fues cells. This article looked interesting:http://pcworld.about.com/news/Oct282004id118376.htm
a 20 watt cell that is roughly 3 by 3.5 by 1/8 inch, generates 20 watts, and is expected to market for $90 this year. The market is notebook computers. They say they are planning to make a stack of 5 for 100 w power. I assume it would cost $450.

These use hydrogen instead of methanol. In some ways, methanol would be easier to carry on a bike and to get refueling supplies, but whatever.

It's here now and at a reasonable price point.

It indeed may be true that hydrogen or methanol production may be less efficient than electrical production (although you need to consider the losses in transporting electricity, charging and discharging batteries), but if it can increase switching from auto to bicycle transport, then I'm sure there will be a major overall energy use reduction.

come on guys lets not be so negative about these things. It is a start to a new way of dealing with things. start small and watch it grow.

So I found your article interesting and I thought I would throw opinion in favour of this technology.

I actually think there IS a market for the system. I believe they did their research, as there is a strong potential market for a fuel cell bike light in the 24 hour mountain bike race scene.

The events require quite a few battery packs (especially in the solo category) all of which go completely unused for the rest of the year (and batteries die when they sit around). If you could simply refuel your lights instead of owning 8 battery packs, in end you could reduce your waste by a fair bit (I assume there is a lot of chemical waste involved with producing batteries. However, now that we have NiMH its a lot better than the evil NiCd days. - Heavy metals... ick!)

In regards to generators, they are good in theory but useless in reality. A number of their short comings have been illuminated (i.e. low power, off when stopped, etc), but personally I find you really notice the drag. I commute close to 100km per day.

When you spend that much time in the saddle and let me tell you I notice the little things like dyno drag. This gets amplified when its dark and raining. Let me say, dyno drag drives me up the wall.

Plus it is impossible to get a dyno hub with a disc mount. I run disc brakes on my cyclo-cross bike as my commute machine. 8 months of the year I am in rain with major hills/mountains. I will not give up the security of disc brakes so I can run a dyno that will slowly drive me mad as a hatter.

Also, if you are on the bike for nearly 3 hours a day, as I usually do (often in the dark to boot), you need to carry around multiple batteries (if you run a high power light system, which I do- 30W - The more you appear like a car the better you are treated).

If there is anyway I could eliminate batteries with a simple recharge device I am all over it with a smile.

Finally, in regards to the waste, if there is a demand for a low waste solution the manufacturer will produce it. Recall, that this is simply in the "hey we got this cool idea" phase. They are feeling out the market. Someone else mentioned encouraging R&D in alternative energy sources and I agree.

Down with the SUV, long live the bike.

PS -> I know lots of people like the idea of power assist bikes, but personally I hate them. To me they get away from the simplicity of being self-powered. That said if it gets you out of a car and on a bike well then I will gladly eat my crow and sit in silence.
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Thanks for this. Those who live by the bike speak with the most authority to me.