Powertrekk charges gadgets over USB, using one fuel cell and one Li-ion battery (video)

Portable fuel cell chargers have been around for years, but each seems to have lasered in on a single important quality thus far, such as a reasonable price , an easy refilling scheme , and a decent amount of power — but never all of the above. Well, it doesn’t look like MyFC’s Powertrekk is the full package either, but it does have a pretty sweet looking case, which holds not only a disposable sodium silicide container to generate the hydrogen gas (which then gets recombined with oxygen in a proton exchange membrane to produce 1000mAh of usable electricity) but also a 1600mAh lithium-ion battery which can provide up to one amp of juice. This way, you’ve got a backup battery if you misplace your cans of fairy dust, and a buffer for the fuel cell too, allowing you to keep those volts in powder or electrochemical form instead of carting around combustable hydrogen — which is always a nice bonus when you think about it. Shame there’s no word on price quite yet, but you can see how it all works in a video after the break. Continue reading Powertrekk charges gadgets over USB, using one fuel cell and one Li-ion battery (video) Powertrekk charges gadgets over USB, using one fuel cell and one Li-ion battery (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 13 Feb 2011 18:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

Posted by on February 13, 2011. Filed under News, Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry