Handling Heat
None of the technologies being developed can be made small enough to fit into a mobile phone or a notebook PC; most instead target military applications, or the replacement of portable generators. Some of the constituent technologies being used, however, may well shrink significantly in the future.
The SOFC under development by the Alberta Research Council, Inc of Canada, for example, is a bundle of cylindrical tubes, each measuring between 10?m and 2mm in diameter (see Fig). The gaseous fuel is blown into the tubes as air flows by them. The smaller the tubes, the larger the specific area of the whole bundle - which means a small SOFC with a high output density. The output density of the firm’s prototype exceeded 500mW/cm2.