Exciting fuel cell advance!!! A game changer?

[ramses (imported)]

http://www.physorg.com/news186123245.html

PhysOrg.com) -- The hot energy news for this week comes in the form of a small box called the Bloom box, whose inventor hopes that it will be in almost every US home in the next five to 10 years. K.R. Sridhar, founder of the Silicon Valley start-up called Bloom Energy, unveiled the device on “60 Minutes” to CBS reporter Leslie Stahl on Sunday evening. Although Sridhar made some impressive claims on the show, he left many of the details a secret. This Wednesday, the company will hold a “special event” in eBay’s town hall, with a countdown clock on its website suggesting it will be a momentous occasion - or at least generating hype.

As Sridhar explained to Stahl, the Bloom box is a new kind of fuel cell that produces electricity by combining oxygen in the air with any fuel source, such as natural gas, bio-gas, and solar energy. Sridhar said the chemical reaction is efficient and clean, creating energy without burning or combustion. He said that two Bloom boxes - each the size of a grapefruit - could wirelessly power a US home, fully replacing the power grid; one box could power a European home, and two or three Asian homes could share a single box. Although currently a commercial unit costs $700,000-$800,000 each, Sridhar hopes to manufacture home units that cost less than $3,000 in five to 10 years. He said he got the idea after designing a device for NASA that would generate oxygen on Mars, for a mission that was later canceled. The Bloom box works in the opposite way as the Mars box: instead of generating oxygen, it uses oxygen as one of the inputs.

Although Sunday was the first time Bloom Energy came public with the Bloom box (there’s not even a sign on the company’s building), several devices are already being used by about 20 well-known companies. Google, FedEx, Walmart, eBay, Staples, and others have taken advantage of tax credits to purchase the Bloom boxes, and they’re seeing cost savings in their energy bills. For example, four refrigerator-sized units have been powering a Google datacenter for the past 18 months, using about half as much natural gas as would be required to generate the same amount of energy at a traditional power plant. And at eBay, five units running on bio-gas made from landfill waste that were installed nine months ago have saved the company more than $100,000 in electricity costs, said eBay CEO John Donahoe on “60 Minutes.” Donahoe added that, on a weekly basis, the Bloom boxes generate five times as much power than the 3,000 solar cells that are installed on the roofs of the company’s buildings.

Sridhar explained that the fuel cells inside the Bloom boxes are made from sand turned into thin ceramic squares, each side coated with a green or black “ink.” A single cell can power about one light bulb, but a stack of 64 of the cells could be “big enough to power a Starbucks,” Sridhar said. In between each disk there's a metal plate, but the Bloom box supposedly uses a cheap metal alloy instead of expensive platinum.

One of Bloom Energy’s early critics, Michael Kanellos of Green Tech Media, noted that researchers have been working with fuel cells since the 1830s. On “60 Minutes,” he told Stahl that, if Sridhar succeeds in making the technology affordable and efficient, there will likely be others that can, too.

“The problem is then G.E. and Siemens and other conglomerates probably can do the same thing,” he said. “They have fuel cell patents; they have research teams that have looked at this," Kanellos said.

"What do you think the chances are that in ten-plus years you and I will each have a Bloom box in our basements?" Stahl asked Kanellos.

"Twenty percent," he said. "But it’s going to say 'G.E.'"

Further details on the Bloom box - its efficiency; the materials it’s made of; how much carbon dioxide, water, heat, and other emissions it produces - are still secret. In a blog post Monday afternoon, Kanellos said that he had found a US patent filed by Bloom in 2006 and granted in 2009 that mentions the material “yttria stabilized zirconia” as well as electrodes made of metals in the platinum family - although this doesn’t necessarily mean anything. More information may be revealed at Wednesday’s event, which will feature John Doerr, partner in the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, which has provided financial assistance to the company. (Sridhar told Stahl that an estimate of $400 million raised by Bloom so far is “in the ballpark.”) Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a member of Bloom Energy’s board, is also scheduled to be in attendance.

More information: CBS

© 2010 PhysOrg.com

[Bagoas (imported)]

I have been waiting for this development for years: a fuel cell which does not require hydrogen as a fuel. Contrary to much hype in recent years, hydrogen is not the "fuel of the future" . It is too expensive to extract and to liquefy and store. A fuel cell which can use natural or bio-gas is a tremendous advance.

A type of sewage disposal device called a digester produces methane as a by-product. The sewage disposal plant in Hartford, Connecticut used to use the methane from digesters to run internal combustion engines to power all of their pumps. This is what I was referring to as "bio-gas" above.

I have been told that they no longer use digesters, but , if the methane can be used to generate electric power cheaply and efficiently, perhaps it would be worthwhile to resume using them.

The use of Bloom boxes to power electric automobiles is also an intriguing possibility.

[bobover3 (imported)]

You mean posters here will start complaining about human and animal life dying out because "greedy" people are consuming all the oxygen?

P.S. By definition, a chemical combination of oxygen with anything else is burning.

[fhunter]

You mean posters here will start complaining about human and animal life dying out because "greedy" people are consuming all the oxygen?

P.S. By definition, a chemical combination of oxygen with anything else is burning.

Oxidizing. Burning is fast variant of it.

It still would produce CO2 and water, and probably other chemicals. So what the difference? Efficiency?

[Paolo]

And do any of you actually think that "Corporate America" is going to let anyone have these things at an affordable price? It's still ALL about MONEY. End of story. This invention, in all practical purposes, was nothing more than a waste of time and research effort. It will never be allowed to go into production to ease the costs of utilities, vehicles, etc.

[DeaconBlues (imported)]

I hate to say this, but I must offer an observation:

The human race does not seem to exhibit any real creativity, intelligence or inventiveness unless.... our backs are to the wall.

"My back to the wall, a victim of laughing chance

This is for me, the essence of true romance."

(Lyrics from the Steely Dan song "Deacon Blues)

How does this observation have any bearing on this thread? Well, this current "global depression" we are in, may in the long run, turn out to be a good thing for the human race, for our cultural and societal development. Then again, it could very likely go in the other direction too. Can't know for sure, at least not for the next 100 years.

My point being this, as things get truly unbearable, if this situation does deteriorate to that level, as people are forced to see their loved ones starving for lack of food, freezing for lack of warmth... Then the survivors will truly have "their backs to the wall." That primitive survival instinct will kick in, and if there is a single grain of genius or creativity in any mind out there, that grain will grow. This very day, somewhere out there, someone does in fact know how to solve our energy woes, someone else probably knows just how to solve other problems, etc. etc. But as long as we are being kept well enough by the current status quo systems, there will be no real changes.

Will this "Bloom box" ever really take off? I seriously doubt it, and if it does, like the man says in the prior posted article, "It will say 'GE' on the side of it," and it will cost at least as much as we are currently paying for our electricity. There is no way "the corporate world" would allow that sort of autonomy to be granted to individual households. They have us "by the balls" (even if you don't have balls - they "got you by the balls") and there is no way they will ever let go.

The only way we would ever see anything like this ever being used to it's fullest potential, is so ironically, if most of what we call "civilization" collapsed and individuals would be able to thing independently, and use their inventions without even considering "patent infringement" or "product liability" issues.

[devi (imported)]

A long time ago I had figure out that it really wouldn't take much electricity to run a household as long as there are no 1)compressors 2)heating elements 3)microwaves 4)obsolete crap such big old televisions sets and 5)any extravagant sound systems that you're neighbors would be cursing you for.

A little bit of a problem with the above device is that if it was set in the wrong place then it might be competing with you and the stove for oxygen. But I'm all for it.

[Old Greebo (imported)]

two Bloom boxes - each the size of a grapefruit - could wirelessly power a US home, fully replacing the power grid;

one box could power a European home, and

two or three Asian homes could share a single box.

So dontcha feel a little bit guilty, you people with US homes? Or should I be asking that question to you US people who currently have homes?

[ramses (imported)]

The biggest thing this will reduce is the use of inefficient power lines criss crossing our country. There is too much money to be made selling these things to stop it if it is as good as they say. And with Google using some larger versions to run their data center, I'm guessing that this technology works.

Car makers are NOT beholden to the energy producers in any way. They could give a crap less if ExxonMobil looses money. If they can incorporate this product into an electric car that will sell, then I'm guessing that they will do it!

It sounds so "conspiracy theorist" to say that "big oil won't allow this". They used to say that about perpetual motion devices too as well as other fancifull gadgets that won't work.

[clysmaniac (imported)]

I'm still at a loss to figure out how one of these devices will "wirelessly" power my home. Maybe it can produce electricity as promised but I can't see how the device will then wirelessly power my refrigerator or run the water pump at the bottom of my well.