New Fuel Cell Twice As Efficient As Generators

Hank Green writes "A new kind of Solid Oxide Fuel Cell has been developed that can consume any kind of fuel, from hydrogen to bio-diesel; it is over two times more efficient than traditional generators. Acumentrics is attempting to market the technology to off-grid applications (like National Parks) and also for home use as personal Combined Heat and Power plants that are extremely efficient (half as carbon-intensive as grid power.)"

Any kind of fuel??

[brunes69]

What does that mean? Is this a Mr. Fusion type device I can run off of apple peels?

Oh wait...

"Acumentrics' 5000 Power System operates directly from natural gas, propane, biofuels, LPG or hydrogen. "

Looks like once again the Slashdot summary is overblown and misleading.

Anyway - sounds like a promising technology. I'll keep tabs on it.

Not perfect ...

[WrongSizeGlass]

... but important nonetheless. It will certainly be cheaper than newer "hydrogen only" technologies coming out and will allow small areas (from rural US to many locations in developing countries) to produce energy for 1/2 the fuel and CO2 emissions. Improvements in efficiency are a step in the right direction. Not everyone (or everywhere) will be making the big energy leaps at the same time or the same pace.

Use as backup generator?

[James McP]

I wonder what the startup time is on the cells. The lack of moving parts and high efficiency sounds like it would be ideal for a backup generator since you could get twice the duration for the same fuel tank. The big question is how long it will take to reach nominal load. If you need an excessive amount of batteries to make the transition it could still be unfeasible.

One would think that you could get racks of the things to get generation capacity in excess of 5KW since the units already consist of multiple tubes. It would simply mean removing the individual DC/AC converters and using one big one.

Anyone have any idea what the maintenance cycles are on fuel cells and how long you can let one sit idle?

Half as carbon intensive as grid power?

[Viol8]

Err , not if the grid power in your area/country comes from hydro, nuclear or renewables.

Factless hype.

[LWATCDR]

"Less than half as carbon intensive as grid-power".
Unless you get your power from hydro-electric or nuclear.
Less than half as carbon intensive as coal, oil fired, or natural-gas? Or is taking the US grid as a whole?
Please try and give more than hype.
This may be great power system but I would like a little more in the way of facts in the summary.

Even more interesting.....

[antisoshal]

If you dig around they are marketing a home system that doubles as a furnace for home heating. Heat is generated using natural gas or propane, and electricity is generated simultaneously that could be used to power a forced air system. Unfortunately like everything else of this nature that seems revolutionary, the home unit is "not currently for sale and available only for testing by suitable partners", and the few products actually for sale are priced so far out of reach as to be functionally useless. I can get a decent 5KW generator for under 1000$ easily, and a good permanent installation could be had for well under 2000$, so this product more or less falls in the same category as the 800,000$ electric car: If you can afford it, you don't need it and could do more for the environment by using that money elsewhere. It seems there is a whole industry based on technology that never comes to fruition. Anyone else remember the computer company in Utah making ASIC based computers that compiled each time they ran to a benefit of 10x the running speed? whatever happened to them?.... Now, if someone like GE or Kohler were to license this tech, it could be produced a magnitude of order cheaper. But then a major player runs the risk of re-tooling at a substantial cost to begin production, only to have their investment dashed by next years innovation which will be even more efficient. There really aren't that many conspiracies out there. We have painted ourselves into an economic hole with the business models we use for capitol investment. Intel could be making chips three times as fast, but until they pay off the 2 billion dollar factory they just finished building for last years chip innovation, it just isn't happening. The conspiracy is just supply and demand economics....

The story source

[trawg]

... and, here's a link to the story source [treehugger.com] - at least they referenced it in the article, but essentially its a rewrite of the treehugger item submitted as blogspam.

While I'm whining, is there a template for stories about huge technological advances in energy production? Like "A startup has developed a new form of [insert name of your favourite green energy production system here]. It takes the existing process of [current way to produce power] and optimises it by [super high level technical details of magical new system], resulting in an efficiency improvement of [insert random number greater than 1 here, without citing details about how it was measured or what the costs of the new procedure are]. Read more about it on [insert link to your blog].

Total cost of ownership over time, otherwise B.S.

[smchris]

Twice the efficiency _is_ technologically interesting. But a generator lasts, what, 10-20-30 years? These cells are what? One use recycled? So how many dozens, hundreds, or whatever fuel cells need to be built to get that "doubled efficiency" of building one generator? And what's the closed system total cost of each system over time?

I notice the article is suspiciously devoid of "$" signs.

Not twice as efficient as generators ... can't be

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_cycle [wikipedia.org]

The thermal efficiency of a combined cycle power plant is the net power output of the plant divided by the heating value of the fuel. If the plant produces only electricity, efficiencies of up to 59% can be achieved. In the case of combined heat and power generation, the efficiency can increase to 85%.

Given the figures cited above, it is impossible for fuel cells to be twice as efficient as modern power stations. That would mean they could get 118% efficiency.

The other issue is global warming and greenhouse gases. At a large power plant, it is feasible to sequester carbon dioxide. That wouldn't work with a zillion small fuel cells scattered around the country. These fuel cells aren't an environmental panacea and may not even be that good for the environment unless their only fuel is hydrogen.

Re:Any kind of fuel??

[Kythe]

Looks like once again the Slashdot summary is overblown and misleading.

Not really -- it's a matter of semantics. The summary is using "fuel" not to mean "anything", but rather, "fuel" as we think of it currently in common parlance. And as the summary immediately follows with examples, I think it's pretty clear what's being talked about.

I'm all for criticism where it's warranted, but in this case, I think the summary is actually rather good.

Re:Use as backup generator?

[Critical Facilities]

Not true. Most wet cell batteries used in commercial UPS Systems' battery strings claim a life of 15-20 years with a realistic life of 8-10 years (slightly less for valve regulated batteries, though they're less common). Also, while it's true that the batteries are "measured"/monitored while not being "used" (e.g. voltage, temperature, specific gravity, internal resistance, etc), they are not fully discharged and then charged automatically.

The only time your batteries should be being discharged at all is when you're experiencing an emergency and are transferring to generator, when you are experiencing a brief undervoltage from your utility provider, or when you are performing a load test of your UPS system. Other than that, there should be no discharging of your batteries going on at all. If there is, you have a problem and are radically shortening the life of your batteries.

Re:Somewhat offtopic but

[WaZiX]

What a dumb point against Nuclear energy.

1) How much of the concrete production comes from building Nuclear powerplants?

2) Electricity Generation is a bigger culprit, so going nuclear (I've been watching Heroes too much) would go in the right direction...

3) Transportation is also a (much) bigger culprit, and electricity will probably end up playing a large role in alternatives to fossilized carbon.

So, the first point isn't really a point, and nuclear energy could save much on the 2 biggest culprits...

Anything else?

Re:The Product Page

[Aladrin]

Your assumption about the price of gasoline doubling... I think that's pretty much a given. We -know- there's a limited amount of fuel in the world. We think we know about how much. We know we use more every year than the previous year.

At some point, gasoline is going to be too expensive to use as common fuel. It maybe in 10 years, like they've predicted for the last 15 or 20 years, or it maybe in in 30 or 40... But I expect to live that long. If the price hasn't doubled again in the next 10 years, I'll be very surprised.

You said 'lifetime', and I assume you meant yours. But let's assume you meant 'lifetime of the generator', because they won't last forever. At current prices, it definitely makes sense to buy the gas generator, as it's unlikely they'll both last more than 10 or 15 years.

But the price of a brand new product is always inflated to make back R&D costs quickly, then drops for sale to the less affluent folk in the world. Better production technology helps bring the cost down, too. I seriously doubt the hardware itself actually costs $175k... At a guess, let's say it comes down to 1/100th of that, $17.5k... It won't be long until it's a lot cheaper than the gas version.

In short, comparing the price of a newly-announced product to the price of a product that's been common for years doesn't work well in the long run.

I definitely agree with the 'screw over opec/etc', though... Even if it costs more, many people will be willing to adopt it for just that purpose.

Re:Let's see..

[ronadams]

Save yourself SEC filings and more red tape fun by founding both as an S-Corporation. No stock, no Board of Directors, no public holdings.

The devil is in the details. IOW, fuggetaboutit

[Ancient_Hacker]

There are a lot of caveats in any use of fuel cells: * A lot of fuel cells work just fine in the lab. Where you have several PhD's carefully tweaking up the chemical inputs over a period of hours or days. Where they hourly titrate the input chemicals to ensure they're at 99.99% purity. Where the cell is maintained with 843 degrees C on the cathode side, -177C on the anode side, maintained plus or minus 0.05 degree C thanks to the half-dozen HP $4,000 quartz resonator thermometers. Where the load is constant non-inductive fixed-value pure resistor. Where it sits on a marble lab bench with no vibration. Where it doesnt matter if a layer of micro bubbles of liquid plutonium forms on the cathode, as your PHD with the least senority can be mandated to start through a stereo microscope and scrape that gunk off with a nano-curette. Then consider the operating environment for your typical car engine. Compare and Contrast. Hand in by the end of the hour. Points for neatness.

Re:Not perfect ... behavior under partial load?

[Anonymous Coward]

So attach your home to the grid, leave that sucker running, and sell power back to the utility. Everybody wins. Distributed grid power, anyone?

Re:The Product Page

[Rei]

We -know- there's a limited amount of fuel in the world.

Then you *know* wrong. Worst case, we can make petroleum from carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide plus water and energy, via Fisher-Tropsh or Sabatier synthesis. You require that there be a concept of "peak energy", not "peak oil", which is something that few are arguing for. Technically, sure, there will be peak energy eventually. There's a few hundred years of coal in known reserves (coal exploration hasn't been done all that widely since reserves are so well known, but power usage will continue to grow). If you consider the use of breeder reactors, thorium, and seawater fuel extraction, at current energy consumption there's ~10k years of nuclear fuel at current consumption rates (hard to predict how our usage needs will be that far out). Deuterium-based fusion (we sure have a long time to get it right...), hundreds of thousands to millions of years at current rates. Solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and proton-proton fusion, billions of years.

Of course, you don't have to resort to using H2O as your hydrogen feedstock for Fischer-Tropsh or Sabatier synthesis as long as we have coal for coal liquifaction, tar sands, methane hydrates/clathrates, TDP, possibly shale, biofuels for replacements, and so on. Many of these are nasty for the environment, but that doesn't change the fact that they are indeed fuel options.

What's currently running out is cheap light natural sweet crude. That's all. The era of $1/gal gasoline is over. Welcome to the era of $2-4/gal gasoline.

Re:The Product Page

[Linux_ho]

What's currently running out is cheap light natural sweet crude. That's all. The era of $1/gal gasoline is over. Welcome to the era of $2-4/gal gasoline. I think you're being unreasonably optimistic about our capacity for refine lower quality petroleum products. Over the next ten years we will certainly see $5-$10 per gallon and ridiculous price volatility as demand will far outpace the speed at which we can refine tar sands, etc into useful products.

Re:The Product Page

[Rei]

No, we won't. If oil stays over $30/barrel (which it almost certainly will), Alberta's oil boom will keep growing at an exponential rate. The bitumen reserves of Alberta alone are bigger than all of Saudi Arabia's conventional reserves. Even if Alberta decides to renegotiate its sweetheart deals or global warming regulation means the steam source must be from CANDUs, not natural gas, all that changes is the cutoff point -- $40, $50 a barrel.

The only thing that could send gas prices over $5/barrel is the sudden and unexpected removal of supplies from the (currently) tight market, since it takes time for new facilities to come online. A good example would be a war with Iran. However, the spike would only be temporary. Bitumen extraction is currently quite economical (both in operating and amortized capitol costs combined versus the value of the product output); the only thing causing companies to hestitate is concerns that crude prices might *drop*.

Also, as mentioned, bitumen syncrude isn't the only source starting to come online at current prices. Even coal liquifaction is becoming economical, and our coal reserves are monstrously big.

Raise prices even higher and you'll have a veritable gold rush.

Re:Half as carbon intensive as grid power?

[Atario]

Also, you could just put a bunch of these on the grid.

People, "the grid" is merely a transport/exchange medium, not a power-generation method.

As far as "being off-grid" as a goal -- why? It just means you have reduced your options.

Re:The Product Page

[Rei]

But we can't get it out of the ground fast enough, and refine it fast enough, to meet demand.

Yes, we can. It's all about how much infrastructure the oil companies want to buy, which is based on their forecasts as to where oil prices will be when the facilities go online. It's not like there's a shortage of tar sands surface area or anything. The same applies to coal. It's not like there's a shortage of coal mining capacity or land to build plants on. It's all about how much they want to invest in infrastructure when it'll be 5-10 years before their investments come online.