The "Upp" fuel cell charger. A completely pointless product.
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- čas přidán 18. 12. 2015
- A look at the Upp fuel-cell USB charger. A completely pointless product which appears inferior to lithium power banks in every respect.
Just plain stupid.
The magic powder is this :
www.gfe.com/en/product-range/m... - Věda a technologie
Just imagine if this company had teamed up with uBeam! They could have shown investors a slide deck with a wireless self-contained charging base station that charges cell phones wirelessly. It has everything that a hot tech investor could want: buzzwords, brand lock-in, maintenance and refill requirements, partner agreements, a distribution network that can be later leveraged, lots of people buying the product for emergency preparedness or gifts (ie not using it). Who cares how little utility it actually delivers. Nice teardown, by the way!
+Applied Science Well it would seem to me this could be easily refilled even just by forcing the hydrogen back into the output port. This sort of thing seems to be right up your alley with gasses and such. I suppose the best way would be to pull a vacuum on it to get rid of any air like you would an AC unit and pressurize it with hydrogen. If the idea is simply to store hydrogen I don't see what the purpose of the media inside the cartridge since it is just consuming space, unless it does it more safely than raw gas. The issue I see is that these are dangerous when empty. Take them on a plane and you've basically got something analogous to thermite that autoignites!
+Applied Science This thing would (almost) work forever if you hooked a batteriser up to it, wouldn't it?
Interesting to see what made this thing work, both from the electrical and mechanical sides.
+stonent The hydrogen actually bonds to the surface of the metal powder inside, which dramatically reducing the pressure required to store the hydrogen. I venture if you take the metal powder out and fill with the same amount of hydrogen the aluminium canister would pop. Also if you store hydrogen as pressured gas you have the problem of the hydrogen diffusing out of your container (especially low density housings like aluminium). I don't know how metal hydrides cope with the diffusion problem, but I can't imagine storing one of those canisters on a shelf for years, in case of an emergency, and still have it contain much hydrogen.
+Applied Science Heh, yeah, maybe they have an option module for connecting to "the cloud" too.
lithium deuteride in warheads is apparently quite stable that's basically the same thing right?
Forgot to mention in the vid, the magic powder is this stuff :
www.gfe.com/en/product-range/master-alloys/applications/metal-hydride-alloys/
+mikeselectricstuff Got its composition from doi:10.1016/j.jpowsour.2012.12.044
Hydralloy C52 (51 wt.% Mn, 28 wt.% Ti,14 wt.% V, 3 wt.% Fe, 3 wt.%
Zr)
+mikeselectricstuff , Nice to see it's available in "Lumps"
+mikeselectricstuff I think the powder exploding was from residual hydrogen randomly being released and combining with oxygen.
+mikeselectricstuff You missed the opportunity to throw that lithium cell on the fire and make it far worse. :-P
+Jack Laidlaw what is that? "£££"
Three faucets? Microscopes?
The video of you piddling around with the mystery powder is better than any Christmas present a man could ask for.
'But it has what plants crave! It's got electrolytes!'
Wrong Mike, mate. ;) Idiocracy actually made my brain hurt, the two yobos next to me didn't get why I kept groaning at that movie.
But what are electrolytes really!? Does anybody even know?
@@Tadesan IT'S GOT ELECTROLYTES!!
Can you not connect it to a Batteriser to get even more watt hours out of it than the manufacturer claims? hahaha
Yep... even two for quadroupling the usable capacity;)
+Иван Иванов we can get infinite energy by connecting a batteriser to another batteriser and doing a batteriser chain!
+IscleGaming | ZefaCraft dude, this is Nobelworthy;) cheers.
+arcadeuk I like this idea, isn't two wrongs make right
+arcadeuk Or hook a batteriser up to a batteriser and make infinite energy! :P
Great post! But I can't get my mind off of the protective plastic film that you've left on the Lenovo smartphone
+PodeCoet I knew someone who left it on every remote control, too! Bit crazy.
+PodeCoet why do people do this? leaving that stuff on just ends up making it look like crap
I've an ancient Nokia 6230i which still has the screen protector intact. It must be doing its job; the phone is a little worn, but the screen is in perfect condition! I might have to remove the cover soon, because it's beginning to lift off at the corners. ;-p The phone battery is original, and still only needs recharging less than once per week, if it is run continuously. How many modern phones will still work properly after 16 years of use, and never suffer a damaged screen?
Regarding the ~500mA peak charging output not reaching the stated box literature of 1A, I notice at 45:42 (in the flash dump) there was a log entry item for "Android Device Connected" which would suggest that there is an intelligent charge controller that will detect the wide array of USB charge profiles (BlackBerry, Android, iOS etc.etc.) and set the power output accordingly.
The lowest common denominator of all of these charging profiles is the "USB in spec" of 500mA which will be achieved by simply connecting +5v/Ground to a load (which is apparent at 12:48 as the green and white cables (DP & DM) are not connected).
Measuring the power in-line when connected one of these devices is connected would have been good, alternatively simulating the charge profile by shorting DP/DM or by adding the correct resistor to identify the device.
Unfortunately there are many different combinations of these and USB charging done correctly is a black art.
But if you connect a dumb device, that does not support any of these phone charging standards, you should be able to get a raw 1A @ 5V.
Over engineered crap.
@@paulstubbs7678 Wrong. The USB spec is *very* clear that if the device does not communicate, it doesn't get more than 500mA, and even that is a bit of a stretch of the standard. Technically it should only give 100mA until communication is established, but the USB-IF made an addendum specifically for chargers that allow 500mA before communication. However, this is all going the way of the dodo anyway. USB-C and USB-PD are freaking *awesome* developments and make charging so much better.
I think this should go into a Wiki entry under the heading, "Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should." Marvelous video as usual.
Energizer Ultimate Lithium AA cells have a shelf life of 15 years, in my opnion a much better source for electricity in an emergency situation and very cheap compared to this fuel cell gadget.
Are they of the 1.5 V lithium chemistry?
A quick Google tells me they are, but I'll ask anyway on this three year old comment.
@@0x8badf00d yes
@@0x8badf00d Blast, I thought this was new - never looked at the date - I hate how CZcams shoves this quite old articles in your face, making you think - here is something new.
@@paulstubbs7678 I know right?
It doesn't look like they skimped out on manufacturing cost. That thing was built pretty well.
+ElGatoLoco698 Even the greatest quality manufacturing won't change the fact that it makes no practical sense when you can have a smaller, lighter, higher capacity lithium battery you can recharge anywhere instead of seeking specialized refill services or buying very expensive refill station for less than half the cost of the spare fuel cells alone.
The most exciting thing I have read about batteries in recent years is Stanford's aluminum battery: they have demonstrated a potentially inexpensive aluminum-based cell that provides extremely high charge and discharge current capability with endurance over 10k cycles. If they can achieve energy density somewhere between NiMH and lithium, Al-ion could replace everything else where lowest weight and volume aren't critical.
You really *can't* skimp on anything that deals with gas. Because if that thing explodes, it will very likely kill someone. It might be completely pointless, and utterly gutless in terms of output, but that doesn't make it any less dangerous, you still can't fuck around with compressed gas of any kind.
A well-made and very interesting piece of completely useless and dangerous engineering.
It's only dangerous when the engineers don't plan for your use case. So, yeah, dangerous in general I suppose - like everything else.
About as dangerous as crossing an empty road.
@@uzaiyaro You should be able to rupture the thing without it killing you.
Awesome vid, Mike. You're always so thorough. Keep up the great work!
hi , do you have any schematics for your electronic DC load ?
This only makes sense if you power your hydrogen generator from a solar powered roadway.
+Glen Slick ....in tornado alley
I will have your children. XD
+Glen Slick Such nonsense :D
+Glen Slick Solar powered roadways are not economically feasible, as Dave Jones has clearly demonstrated.
pepper669 I'm pretty sure that was the joke.
I assume the cartridge is sodium hydride (NaH), so I'd give a guess on the chemistry. NaH is pyrophoric in air (spontaneously combusts), this is most often attributed to the reaction with moisture:
NaH + H2O -> NaOH + H2, the reaction is hot and causes the H2 to catch fire.
You'll also be left with quite a lot of unreacted NaH sodium oxides, which I suspect is the reason why your powder looks very grey. I can't figure out how this device generates the H2 though, what reaction does it carry out on the NaH?
+TheAmmoniacal If the supposition is right, the NaH would be to remove traces amounts of water vapor when filling with pressurized hydrogen that could mess with the cell later. Still not much safer than lithium.
+TheAmmoniacal I dont really understand the mentality that this is safer than carrying compressed hydrogen....
So if the compressed hydrogen leaks, it *may* catch fire, but it needs to be exposed to a spark or flame. If this stuff spills out it goes up in flames regardless. Sure it doesn't seem to detonate, but I'm sure if you took a full one of these apart it wouldn't be a small flame. Seems silly to me.
+TheAmmoniacal the way I understand hydrogen storage that the material used suppose to absorb it at high pressures (don't think via chemical reaction) then release it when the pressure drops down, by doing so the pressure stays fixed in spite of the drainage of hydrogen, what material that is, I have no clue.
Modern hydrogen storage tanks do use a metal sponge-like material with a very high surface area and an affinity for H2. This allows for more H2 gas in the same volume. But a small can like that wouldn't hold that much hydrogen, 2.2 grams of H2 is ~25 L, even at 4 atm and 20 C we're talking 6.6 liters. Effective hydrogen sponge then!
+Andy Plater A full one is probably akin to a faulty li-ion battery in a laptop or a cell phone which both are allowed on planes as well.
One of the most entertaining teardowns I've ever seen! Thanks mikeselectricstuff, you and bigclivedotcom make these things fun to watch!
I keep coming back to watch this again. Classic teardown, love it!
I guess some marketer found the fact that hydrogen has more energy per mass than regular batteries, but failed to consider that on such a small scale converter circuitry is not of negligible weight, and hydrogen distribution is a pain in the butt... Fun experiment but nothing more than that, even though that is not what the marketing department want consumers to believe.
+tHaH4x0r By the way, the third manufacturer you found at 10:30, Horizon, is actually a very well known fuel cell manufacturer from china.
I participated as a student in the Shell Eco Marathon with hydrogen vehicles and most of the other student groups used hydrogen cells (we designed our own). The year before us they used a horizon stack as well, with a lot of problems attached to it i might add.
I've been meaning to get a battery bank. how much is say a medium capacity one? what is the model of the one you showed in the video?
I've been needing some mikeselectricstuff teardowns in my life, and this one delivers! That thing is a joke, but an extremely fascinating little piece of engineering. Legendary teardown, 5/5 stars!
awesome video mike, nice to see you back with the extreme teardowns!
Damn, well done. I missed your videos. Fantastic per usual.
Burning the hydrogen from the cell was like saying "This is the only thing that this shit is usefull for" to the manufacturer lol
The hydride material is usually some sort of titanium alloy; finely divided titanium is pyrophoric and burns quite nicely.
I'm sure this question will make you wet yourself. But does this mean that if you cut (or grind) a chunk of titanium, that any of the tiny bits that come off can spontaneously combust?
@@uzaiyaro Technically yes, but we're talking very small particles with a very high surface area to volume ratio, basically fine powder, which you're unlikely to get in normal machining processes, so in practical terms, no...
You should bring the HS camera out for such special and festive occasions with fireworks!
Out of curiosity and related to this topic, what is the shelf life of a (lets presume the best brand(quality) and highest capacity available at this time) 18650 litium battery in a state "ready to use" (and in the best storage conditions(engineered to maximize shelf life Vs power output(80% charge if it lasts an additional year more then a 100% charged)))
+TornTech with regards to battery deterioration from sitting on the shelf in a fully charged state.
Two places in Scotland, three on the Isle of Mann. Maybe they were hoping to service Big Clive.
That was a hilarious show. Can't decide which part I love most. You're awesome :)
+NurdRage can have a guess at the chemistry of that stuff at 47:00?
Doesn't cost $6 to charge a standard battery bank...
Hi，could you please provide me the speech draft of this video（if you have）？
Man that thing is DANGEROUS. Wow. Scared the hell out of me when it first spilled on your bench. Wow.
Your commentry at about 9:18 are just so awesome ✌️😂
While you were load-testing the battery, there were some snapping noises. Were they from the battery itself?
Looks like you beat me to it, was rather tempted to get one of these just to pull it apart and see how it works. Now I want to get hold of some of that powder, looks like fun, might just have to get one anyway. Interesting how it just spontaneously com busted like that, kind of makes me wish I knew more about chemistry, so much interesting stuff to learn about, so little time to learn about it.
That has to be the first time in the history of man "Caution do not disassemble" had some real meaning ;)
If you were to connect a normal hydrogen supply (ie gaseous) will it be able to run?
I found two 1kg hydrogen canisters that are full of it for a bargain price (5€) and was wondering if maybe I could run such a thing off them. Right now I have no use for those canisters...
+MrOpenGL yes you probably could, though you'd need to regulate the pressure and flow for optimum output, and it may need to be fairly pure to avoid contaminating the cell - don't know how sensitive it is to that.
I can think of some more fun things to do with 1 kilo hydrogen canisters though....
mikeselectricstuff
OK I understand you want to show all your Photonicinduction-style, but I don't think my neighbours would appreciate the "venting with flame" or "rapid disassembly" of the hydrogen canisters... hehe!
+MrOpenGL You can get fuel cells of every size. Problem is they'd never pay for themselves by producing electricity, unless you have a source for more of those cheap canisters. What else can you do with hydrogen? Hm, there's always filling balloons with it. You could make a home-made zeppelin out of thin plastic, and fly it round. It's safe enough, they used hydrogen in commercial zeppelins (til the Hindenburg, obviously...).
Investigations have shown the Hindenburg's failure probably wasn't a result of it using hydrogen. It's a shame it happened, because hydrogen lifting would be a very cheap way of getting things into the air, especially compared to helium, which has a very limited supply.
Helium is produced by alpha decay of radioactive elements on Earth. Most of it floats into the upper atmosphere and escapes into space. The supply we have, mostly comes from natural gas reserves trapped in the ground, a certain amount of helium can be in there with the methane. Once it's gone, it'll be millions of years to make more. And it has unique uses, including in cryogenics where it's used to get to the lowest temperatures possible.
Using it for birthday balloons ought to be a crime! The story behind that, is the USA has a large stock of it, and it was costing them money to keep. Since demand isn't that great, politicians ordered it to be sold off cheap. The idiots! Cheap now, but in years to come it'll be priceless! Invest in a tank now!
Anyway... hydrogen... as long as you're not carrying passengers, you could try using it for lifting things, might be fun.
Awesome video, Mike. Thanks for tearing apart this fuel cell for us.
Hello Mike !
I am a long time subscriber and fan. I really enjoy watching your videos especially the ones on medical devices
Would it be possible for you to do a tear down video of a wearable insulin pump ?
Thanks !
9 Years....I recently ripped apart a 12 year old laptop battery I found in my local library's battery recycle bin. Inside were ten 18650 lithium ion batteries. With a smart charger (Foxnovo 4S), I determined only 2 of the batteries were bad, the other 8 batteries still had 1800-2000mah capacity of an original capacity of 2200mah. I put 4 of them them in a usb power bank (made for 18650 baterries) I bought on ebay for $2.50, and gave the thing to my dad. He charges the usb power bank with the same cable (micro usb) he uses to charge his phone and he's very happy with it. I don't see hydrogen power being economically viable for many years, if ever.
Might it be that you have to negotiate for >500-600ma? Also, must have been fun getting approval for these on airplanes. You could do far more damage with a few of these than you could with the pair of nail clippers that the TSA was kind enough to liberate be of.
Great video, thanks Mike!
The fan noise at around 34:00 sounds pretty familiar. Possibly a HP 6632B?
Man makes fire - was tank empty before you opened it?
Also. If anyone is curious why is there a row of "ÿÿ" in 44:35, the "ÿ" is 255 (0xFF) in ASCII so it's quite distinguishable from the data
not sure if its mentioned, the rubber gasket that you were questioning, there is a hole in the middle of the fuel cell Chassis to exhaust the water vapor (i think, the common hole in each cell runs back to there)... so the top of the gasket is to spread the vapor out though the fans, and the bottom is to make sure the hydrogen is evenly spread out over the fans and isn't coming out at a pressure.
Great video, would be interested to see what catalyst they used in the fuel cell. It seems that fuel cell technology is still way ahead of its time for mass consumer use. But one day it may become cheap enough so the technology itself is rather promising if they can get the price down and efficiency up.
Duh
While the concept is rather stupid, atleast it is highly engeneered and seams to be produced fairly high quality and low tolerances. Still i prefer a cheap battery bank.
Looks like you got to have some fun towards the end there! Maybe buy some of those fuel capsules on liquidation and use them for New Year pyrotechnics?
hydrogen fuel cell storage solutions are most likely to be used for power stations storing off peak power and generating the power for peak grid usage. I very much doubt we'll see hydrogen fuel cells used in automobiles due to the tricky nature of recharging the hydrogen storage canister with hydrogen gas, I just don't see that happening at your local supermarket. Super teardown Mike
+James Barnett Not to mention that a hydrogen fuel cell automobile is essentially a battery electric vehicle, but with a smaller battery, fuel cell, and hydrogen tank.
+James Barnett You could address the recharge issue quite easily: Pull out tank, insert new tank.
James Barnett there's more hydrogen in a gallon of hydrogen than there is in a gallon of liquid hydrogen.
Excellent teardown and evaluation.
Does anyone else see the irony of needing a large Li-ion cell in order to charge a device using hydrogen? Epic fail.
Very interesting video. Interesting reaction with the powder and self igniting. Very expensive device. A lot of money for a small amount of energy.
Mike, thank you for that video, you've made my day :)
More than likely the tank contained sodium aluminium hydride. It is relatively stable in dry air but really does not like water. There may have been a small bit of out gassing keeping the moisture away until you poured out the tank.
I forgot to mention that there are several other candidates for the compound in the tank. But the end result for most of them is the same. They do not like water.
+Christian Raley What would be the best way to store the magic powder if you wanted to mess with it a bit at a time? under mineral oil?
Yes, that would work. Hexane, Cyclohexane, Octane, Paraffin, ... everything as long as its a saturated hydrocarbon. Ethers like Diethylether will work too, also unsaturated (but only in the aromatic part) hydrocarbons like Benzene or Toluene.
Oh man! Good thing you went outside with this. Love the vid! As far as I know the stuff in there is magnesium hydride.
there's a great video by the university of Bath, called "Hydrogen Storage Materials Research". It's worth watching.
The "Backstage Science" channel has a video on solid hydrogen storage, which is really nice as well.
I came for the rant, but stayed for the fireworks
Come to think of it, if we have the valve from the "master" unit (where it converts hydrogen into electricity), couldn't we just fill the battery up by injecting hydrogen gas into it?
4 years later and I’m surprised this isn’t all over instagram with all the other shite that’s promoted nowadays.
Exciting and interesting teardown. Thankyou!
Very nicely done in-depth video.
Liked the fireworks for added effect.
I love how Horizon solved the accessibility problem by selling an in-home "charger" thingy which the UPP suffers from.
But I still wonder how many times it can be re-"charged" before it wears out, (if it ever does).
I think it is highly fascinating and you did get what you were asking private "DIY" fill station even though the price of 400USD is steep, but all new tech is steep when it is undermined by novelty and first-mover concept.
but the biggest problem is sadly this fuel-cell-tech is not ransome for today's tech' when we are dealing with 3watt sustained..
but I do love the concept and it is always easy to point fingers in hindsight.
and these fuel cell-technology ain't cheap and also comes with some concern.. and you video demonstrated it greatly the extent such a product needs to meet.. very fascinating product.
Look into Lithium Aluminium Hydride. Has been used in fuel cell research for years and is very pyrophoric. Has a nice red flame from the lithium. Stores hydrogen very well.
I have played with it quite a bit and you need to open the jar in a glove box purged with argon.
There is a type of fuel cell that you could run off of a butane can: SOFC (Solid Oxide Fuel Cell). In fact they care so little about the fuel they are practically a Mr Fusion (maybe a slight exaggeration). The downside is that they typically run at around 1000 degC and don't like to be thermally cycled so they are currently only any use where you need power all the time. The high operating temperature means they are much less prone to poisoning so you can run them straight off natural gas, in fact pretty much any light hydrocarbon will work or hydrogen of course. For a while I worked on finding better materials to bring the operating temperature down, it was tough because there were so many factors that needed to be optimized. As for the fire I'd guess one of the metals is able to catalyse the combustion of the hydrogen which then causes the metal to catch fire.
That would have been a good opportunity to use the high speed camera setup. Could have spread some light into what was happening.
Looks like there were a couple dates,in the I2C EEPROM dump.. 26/06/2014 and 25/06/2014..with "FMG" after them. Maybe manufacturing date/first fill+pressure test date? No idea. Just a WAG.
I'm amazed to find these for sale still on Amazon in March 2019- GBP55 for the kit including a cartridge.
can you even still get them refilled anywhere or are these basically one-shot by now? lol
The clicking is most likely not the valve, but a relay. Fuel cells short out their output periodically to clean the stack out. The higher the load, the more frequent the short needs to be. It is often synchronized with valve operation thought.
You are right about these things, they are not cheap and they are pointless. I would be much happier with a USB battery pack and then I wouldn't have to find a place to exchange it either. The only way those fuel cells will be practical is if you could fill them yourself. I really do agree that this is not something that is worth buying and a rechargeable battery pack is better.
I have to say, it's useless, but.. REALLY well engineered. That must have been so much fun for the designers to make. Everything is nicely molded, metal, high quality.. They didn't cheap out on anything it looks like. Great engineer porn, however useless it is.
The blazing bubble pillar got me thinking: If you were to make a soapy solution with some salt, wouldn't the tower then burn a bright color? Hydrogen itself burns colourless and the orange flame most likely came from sodium impurities in the water/soap you used.
We are having a children's science exibition thingy at our lab and colourfull hydrogen explosions are _just_ the right ratio of danger and fun.
I suppose it's there for those who are concerned about climate change, clean air, recycling etc, and don't really understand what they're buying.
+Barrios Groupie This product must use way more resources to make (and use) than a lithium battery, so any eco argument is bullshit
mikeselectricstuff Yeah, it is bullshit, but the stupid and ignorant don't realize what they're buying into.
It's similar to people buying expensive solar panel chargers believing they're helping the planet, but not taking into account the lifetime of the panel, the light conditions, and its cost. In most cases it would be cheaper and better for the planet if they stuck to their local electricity supplier and rechargeable batteries.
+Barrios Groupie Modern solar PV panels amortization cost is at around or under 3cent/kWh this with 25 year amortization time my local solar conditions and panels purchased in low volume at about $1/Watt. They can be found for quite a bit less than $1/watt at the moment.
In case of battery things are different with amortization cost of around 60cent to well over $1/kWh stored in deep cycle Lead Acid and best case LiFePO4 at a theoretical cost of 15cent/kWh probably real life use closer to 25cent/kWh still more expensive that grid energy in most places (that is just battery cost amortization in close to ideal use conditions).
So solar PV are for sure cost effective but battery storage not unless you are offgrid in a remote area as is my case.
+electrodacus If the solar panel is mounted on a roof top connected to the grid or permanent load/usage - sure, that will eventually pay out given the right orientation and local energy cost . But as a offgrid temporary/"moblie"/emergency/remote area charging solution, I think batteries would be better then a mini solar panel.
sarowie
Not sure I get what are you saying. In the worst cloudy snowy day here I get about 8 to 10% of the energy I will get in a full sunny day. But since a solar PV panels amortization cost is 2.5 to 3 cent and some of the best batteries (LiFePO4) have an amortization cost of 20 to 30cent it will be more convenient to get an over-sized PV array (even 10x larger than needed) and will still be as good or better than a battery.
I moved off-grid almost 3 years ago and decided I will even heat the house hopefully from next winter completely with solar PV panels. I will do that not to save the planet :) but to save my budged. Currently I use propane and that is 5 to 10x more expensive than heating with solar PV electricity.
The heat will be stored in thermal mass that is at least 20x less expensive than battery storage. I will be using the 14 cubic meter of concrete that is my house thermally insulated slab foundation so already part of the building and this can store 100kWh at a 10C temperature delta good enough for my energy efficient house so no need for a backup heating source if I get a few consecutive cloudy days.
To answer your question "Why", Probably because of coolness factor, for being able to say "I have a Hydrogen Fuel Cell in my pocket".
Hang around toward the end folks. This one gets exciting. Especially for Mike. :)
Mike, doing dangerous things so we don't have to.
Thanks for the entertaining Christmas Present Mike! On balance, this is a pretty well made and engineered product. It is just a shame the product concept itself is pants. Brave man to put a DSLR so close to a violently exothermic system ;)
i bought about 4.1kW of lipo cells for 800 pounds few months ago to power my electric scooter. these things are insanely priced. (and my battery can suppy 2kW for 2 hours at 48v).
looking at the reactions that stuff gives i put my money on some lithium cells please.
According to the manufacturers website the composition is
Ti + Zr 25 - 35%
Mn 45 - 55%
V + Fe 15 - 20%
Further possible alloying elements
Cr, Ni
Interesting tear down mike. Cheers
Another issue is that at 4 psi there will always be hydrogen gas in the cell just waiting to escape though tiny gaps in the vessel and possibly even through the metal and valves over time. In 9 years it's not inconceivable that the cell capacity would have diminished significantly or completely.
A company named Jadoo Power Systems made 130 WH 12 volt fuel cells for professional camcorders in the early 2000's. They were refillable from a tank of hydrogen. Some people used them for a while, but they never caught on. The company is out of business.
+Chris W Jadoo is still making new products, though not fuel cells. Maybe someone else purchased the brand.
It made an interesting teardown though :) Thanks!
A generic alkaline AA battery has about 2 watt hours in it. I can buy 8x Sony alkaline batteries at the local pound shop. So a potential 16w/h of energy for £1. How did anyone ever think £6 for 25w/h was a good idea (after you factor in the £150 purchase price).
So Let's say you use 25 fuel cell exchanges (6 x 25) + 150 = £300 for 625w/h of Upp power. Convert that into AA batteries (625/2) /8 = £40, so you are paying a £260 premium over a lifetime for fuel cells.
I wonder what would happen if you fed HHO into the cell instead of just Hydrogen?
I have an 11-plate Ogo "dry cell" which I was experimenting with a few years ago (tried getting a generator to run directly from the cell - it worked for a surprising amount of time, but the flow rate wasn't fast enough).
Obviously HHO is even more scary and combustible, but since it has the Oxygen mixed in, would it actually "over-load" the cell maybe? I wonder how the microcontroller would react to it as well?
Great vid, Mike. A really interesting teardown of a truly bonkers and fairly useless product.
I live down in Mordor (Devon), so I'm nowhere near to any of the Upp "refill" stations. lol
I think I'll stick to using Lithium cells until they figure out how to make these things work on Nitrogen. :p
+electronash Pressurizing HHO would turn it into a pipe bomb.
Well, probably, but I was wondering how the fuel cell itself would react to HHO instead of pure Hydrogen.
It wouldn't have to build up too much pressure, as it would be similar to the small pressures that the Upp already works with (around 4 PSI, from what Mike tested).
+stonent Well certainly a lot of energy in those right?
Given the reactivity, my guess would be lithium aluminum hydride, possibly with some extra secret sauce.
Would be interesting to retrofit generic pressurized H2 200bar tank to it.
Mike, this was one of your best videos so far!(imo) I really like the effort you put into them. You read the eeproms and even did some DaveStyle ranting in the beginning! Good stuff:)
forgot one thing ... the explosions, yay!:)
+Иван Иванов Да,ломать не строить - душа не болит;)
+TheLaser373 ;)
excellent vid, thank you Mike
Hilarious and insightful, thanks Mike. You have the deadpan thing down.
I loved this video especially the point where you were surprised at the fall out of the internal chemicals producing a spark/fire.
My concern though was the point where you depressed the outlet valve (16:33) and ignited the Hydrogen, then repeatedly released the valve. I am referring to welding equipment and the gases used and the valves used too. they have flame retarding systems to prevent blow back and explosion of the gas bottle. I doubt this unit would have that as your procedure would never be something considered. If the worst had happened, then for you it would be the Hindenburg all over again.
RIP mikeselectricstuff nnnooooooo! don't do it, we need you.!! (Please correct me if I'm wrong here)
All fairness to the manufacturers, it's no surprise this unit is soooo expensive, the work gone into this is incredible, the safety aspect and the RnD needs to be recouped.
This would require a highly contaminated hydrogen supply, would it not?
The airlines don't like me taking my lithium ion powerbank in the cabin, so this product looks perfect.
from hurricanes, tornadoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, hurricanes, tornadoes and hurricanes.
So, Ben from applied science. What was that chemical reaction?
+TheBertjeT It looks like the fine powder metal hydride (mainly lithium?) was very reactive in humid air. Even though the hydrogen pressure was low, there was still quite a lot of adsorbed hydrogen in the powder, which fanned the flames so to speak!
+Applied Science Well along with what I said earlier sort of similar to thermite. Instead of the iron oxide, you have lithium burning up into lithium oxide and then the fine aluminum powder which someone else said was likely in it. Not very airplane friendly!
+Applied Science Ha! I had a feeling you were going to be here!
Judging by the flame colours I would bet on it being some sort of lithium hydride powder.
My impression of hydrogen fuel cells was that they could be recharged electrically, hydrogen being generated by hydrolysis and then being converted back to electricity via the black magic that I don't understand. Is that only with certain designs? Either way, my question would be why wasn't it designed to be recharged with an ac adapter or w/e, like external battery gadgets
+Rob Mckennie It seems like this uses some incompatible design, the cartridge being merely a container and such, but again, all black magic to me.
+Rob Mckennie And there *is* the rechargeable one, but very expensive
+Rob Mckennie the black magic is not very hard to understand. fuel cells are like batteries, but instead of having all the reactive substances inside the battery and keeping the spent material inside, fuel cells have the reactants stored separately, sometimes take one reactant from air(oxygen) and vent outside.
the essential components of a fuel cell are the same of a battery, and are: two reactants, two electrodes to take the electrons from one reactant, to pass through the load and dump it in the other reactant and something that let some substances pass, but not others.
in a hydrogen fuel cell with a plastic membrane, the reactants are hydrogen and oxygen dissolved in air, the electrodes are fine particles of some especial metal, usually platinum on carbon, and thing that conducts substances is a patented type of plastic with some water in it.
the workings are simple, the hydrogen come, got their electrons taken by the electrode, becoming protons, the protons pass through the plastic membrane thanks to tiny bits of water in it, n the other side oxygen receives electrons, becoming negative, and it reacts with the protons becoming water and releasing heat.
Bloody hell, there's a lot of stuff in that thing!
LinusTechTips did a video on the brunton one. It's also terrible.
For the cost, I'd rather just buy several of those "bulky batteries" (lets say those EC Tech 24Ah battery banks) and use those to be able to charge my phone for a week straight.
I thought you broke the PCB so how did you get it working for the measurements?
Boy did I jump when shit started to explode.... Haha...
Nice video!
Linus Techtips does a rant on the same kind of thing.
czcams.com/video/1-yLqwGS2dA/video.html
All this product does is makes hydrogen fuelcell cars look bad, but they are not.
+IIGrayfoxII I was about to post this as well :P
+Miguel Simões But linus doesnt go this far.
Thus this version is better.
+IIGrayfoxII they are and both of these videos perfectly show why.
+IIGrayfoxII maybe not as horrible as these insane products, but lithium batteries are sill far superior.
+IIGrayfoxII Another thing that makes hydrogen cars look bad: Thair look! Why are all electric/hydrogen cars always so ugly? They always look like deformed wannabe spaceships! They need to build a nice fuelcell van or pickup and more people would buy it (including me).
Good old hand crank generator FTW. Cheaper, safer, simpler, "greener" and lasts much longer (no LiPo for the cell controler).