CleanTechnica

Published on October 4th, 2014 | by Tina Casey

Is That An Upp Portable Fuel Cell In Your Pocket, Or Are You Just Glad To See Me?

October 4th, 2014 by Tina Casey

After reviewing a few portable solar chargers, it’s time to turn our attention to portable fuel cells. The concept first crossed our radar a while back in the context of military uses, where the idea is to provide today’s geared-up soldier with the lightest, most energy dense form of portable power-on-the-go. While the technology is a bit on the bulky side now, it is rapidly evolving, and so is the hydrogen supply chain.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at the Upp portable fuel cell from Intelligent Energy.

Upp portable fuel cell (screen shot) courtesy of Intelligent Energy.

An Easy-To-Use Portable Fuel Cell

Whenever we get a new gadget in the mail, the first thing we look for is a streamlined, intuitive setup right out of the box along with ease of use, and the Upp hits those marks perfectly.

Upp consists of a charger and a snap-in cartridge. You can figure out how they go together just by looking at the picture on the box.

Plug in your USB device and you’re good to go.

We got a quick charge for our iPhone, which was almost depleted, and that was that.

The fun thing is, if you have other USB devices around the house you can do some experimenting. The Upp website notes other USB devices that the company has confirmed work with Upp aside from phones. We didn’t see our nifty little portable solar USB charger from a previous review on the list, but we gave it a try anyways, since this particular solar charger has a built in battery that can be recharged from a wall socket when the sun is not available. That worked out just fine, too.

What else? Oh, right. Portability. Assembled, Upp weighs about a pound or so. It is about as long as a toothbrush case and wide as a nice, fat, banana, so in terms of portability it is small and light enough to slip into your cargo pants, or your bag or backpack or whatever.

Portable Fuel Cell’s Got Your Back

Upp is a bit pricey in terms of an everyday source of reliable power-on-the-go, but then again if you can afford any of those other gadgets CleanTechnica keeps gushing about, like a Tesla or a BMWi3, portable fuel cells are chump change.

If you reside in the real world of energy budgeting, investing in a portable fuel cell can still make a lot of sense, especially when you need reliable backup or auxiliary power to conduct your business or professional activities on the go.

As an addition to your vehicle emergency kit, Upp gives you something no conventional battery can: practically unlimited shelf life. So, if your car dies in the middle of nowhere and you really need a charge for your phone, problem solved, even if you haven’t used your Upp all year.

You can also ramp up the longevity factor by investing in an extra cartridge or two. For that matter, if you bring along a portable solar charger (like this one or this one), you can reserve the fuel cell cartridge to pitch in when solar conditions aren’t helpful.

For outdoorsy stuff, portable fuel cells aren’t exactly the ultralight or ultra-small devices you want for extreme adventuring, but the Upp is plenty small and light enough for day trips, base camps, or any number of other activities.

Portable Fuel Cells, Today And Tomorrow

If you noodle around some of the portable fuel cell reviews, one issue that crops up pretty regularly is the inconvenience of buying refill cartridges.

All we can say to that is: SodaStream. SodaStream was the very first product we ever reviewed, back in 2009, and it really was a pain trying to get refill cartridges. Nowadays the cartridge vendors are more numerous in our region, and it’s like nothing to return the spent one and get a refill in the course of normal errand-running.

Upp has the added advantage of Internet connectivity, highlighted by a handy mobile app that lets you find the nearest cartridge vendor among other things.

For that matter, given the advances in “artificial leaf” renewable hydrogen production, you’re looking at a future in which you could make a one-time investment in equipment, and then get busy making your own hydrogen at home and refilling your own cartridges.

Speaking of renewable hydrogen, we’ve spilled a lot of ink about the impacts of natural gas fracking, and it’s worth bringing that up because natural gas is the primary source of hydrogen today.

However, commercial-scale renewable hydrogen production is beginning to emerge, as well as fuel cells that run on biogas.

[Correction: an earlier version of this post had Upp launching at Apple stores in the UK. That has not come about as of this writing, stay tuned for an update. The Apple angle would be an interesting development considering Apple's interest in commercial-scale fuel cells. Apple's banner fuel cell installation in North Carolina is currently sourced from fossil gas but the company is offsetting it with credits from a biogas operation.]

The US Army is also conducting some interesting work on producing hydrogen for portable fuel cells, by reformulating jet fuel. Right now they’re looking at fossil-sourced jet fuel but the renewable angle could come into play as next-generation biofuels enter the market.

Before we go, we gotta fess up to recycling our headline from a few years ago, when we took note of a miniature portable fuel cell under development at Oxford University. That project is interesting because it would enable you to produce hydrogen on the go, through a conversion process involving formic acid.

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Tags: Intelligent Energy, portable fuel cells, Upp fuel cell

About the Author

Tina Casey Tina Casey specializes in military and corporate sustainability, advanced technology, emerging materials, biofuels, and water and wastewater issues. Tina’s articles are reposted frequently on Reuters, Scientific American, and many other sites. Views expressed are her own. Follow her on Twitter @TinaMCasey and Google+.

GCO

Tina, if I may, I’d feel more informed as a reader if instead of odd comparison with beverages carbonation, you’d please try and provide:

1) Numbers.

I had to look it up: an Upp cartridge holds 25 W⋅h, and the refill (exchange of an empty one for a full one) supposedly would cost 10 $.

Yes that’s 400 $/kW⋅h, not counting the hassle of exchanging all those cartridges.

2) Criticism, e.g. comparison with alternatives.

The most obvious here being, batteries.
A single AA, alkaline or Ni-MH rechargeable, holds ~3.5 W⋅h. 8-packs at 6$ for alkalines; 20$-something for good rechargeables. Hmm…

Want more compact? A 18650 Li-ion (laptop-style cell) reaches 10 W⋅h.
Little “4 x 18650″ USB power bank gizmos start at less than 20$. Even with the low-quality cells one would get at that price, it’d still best the Upp on cost, weight, volume, performance (2A output), and — ding ding ding! we have a winner — the convenience and affordability (below 1c) of at-home recharging.

tl;dr: This fuel-cell product makes no sense whatsoever.
Bob_Wallace

Another solution looking for a problem.

If you’re someone who finds yourself away from the grid from time to time and you need more battery life then just carry some extra batteries. Cheaper, lighter and less complicated.
Burnerjack

Speaking of ‘fuel cell’ type devices, while not portable, whatever happened to Bloom BOX?
- Benjamin Nead
  
  Good question, Burnerjack. Perhaps the Bloom Box ended up being a kinder, gentler version of the EEStor supercapacitor. This might tell us more . . .
  
  http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/the-bloom-is-off-bloom-energy/
JamesWimberley

The main obstacle to this is the success of the electronics industry in making the USB connector a standard. It’s now been extended to carry greater power to run more devices. Anyway they are becoming ubiquitous.
- Benjamin Nead
  
  Agree. At the risk of paraphrasing Winston Churchill, James, I’d have to say that “The USB connector is the worst possible solution imaginable, save for all those other data transfer and low voltage DC connectors.”
  
  Seriously, though, USB has been a boon to portable data devices over the past decade and a half . . . certainly better than SCSI, which was a data cable standard that kept on morphing horrendously through its thankfully short life . . . changing the number of pins on the connectors seemingly every few weeks and with increasingly ridiculous names, like “super ultra wide fat” SCSI, and so on. All this, unlike USB, which never changed the physical shape of the connector for the first decade (at least the primary full-sized ones,) all while making significant strides in data transfer rates.
  
  You can ever plug a 1990s era USB 1 device into a USB 3 plug and – software willing – the darn thing will probably work. I’d rank the USB right up there with analog RCA barrel connectors found on generations of home stereo equipment: there are better ways to make a similar electrical signal connection, but ubiquity and backward compatibility has kept that one relevant since the 1930s.
  
  The 5VCD is the icing on the cake for USB, allowing the charging of batteries on everything from cell phones, to bicycle tail lamps, to micro radio control helicopters from either a desktop/laptop PC or battery pack (the latter of which possibly having a too-small PV panel or a too-expensive fuel cell attached.)
  
  Final thoughts on the USB . . . as you note, we’ve got yet another USB variant on the horizon, USB PD . . .
  
  http://www.usb.org/developers/powerdelivery/
  
  I’m envisioning the day that I can have a house wired with 48V/ 100W USB PD outlets, with all my devices lacking AC-to-DC transformers and – in the case of TV/BluRay gear – data transfer as well.
Benjamin Nead

I can’t help thinking that this is just a little more than an amazingly expensive “lifestyle” accessory. Where does one find the preloaded hydrogen cartridges? Will they have to be shipped and what are the DOT restrictions for transportation? The latter would be an especially critical concern, if you wanted to take the Upp onto a plane. It’s not as if these cartridges are going to be able to be easily refilled by the end user. Or am I missing something here?

Also . . . all the usual questions regarding where the hydrogen in the pre-loaded cartridges comes from: expensive (but environmentally benign) water electrolysis, or cheaper (but environmentally dirty) steam methane reformation?

And . . . the byproduct of a fuel cell producing electricity is water, which might be an asset on a larger stationary unit or even one found in a car. But does one need adult diapers to carry the Upp around all day in a backpack, purse or pocket?

A solar panel packaged with a sufficiently-sized batteries (and, for practicality, the ability plug into an AC outlet if the sun isn’t shining) seem to be not only less expensive, but also more convenient and greener. Here’s one such idea on that front, reviewed on this site earlier this year . . .

http://mysolartab.com/
JamesWimberley

Great title, Mae. (Runs for the door.)

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