Dishwasher-Size, 25kW Fuel Cell In Development 379
mcgrew writes "Forbes has an article about a new type of fuel cell that is 90% less costly than current cells at one tenth the size (making it the size of a dishwasher), with far higher efficiency than current cells. It runs at only 149 degrees Celsius (300F) . It was jointly developed by Diverse Energy and the University of Maryland. 'The first-generation Cube runs off natural gas, but it can generate power from a variety of fuel sources, including propane, gasoline, biofuel and hydrogen. The system is a highly efficient, clean technology, emitting negligible pollutants and much less carbon dioxide than conventional energy sources. It uses fuel far more efficiently than an internal combustion engine, and can run at an 80 percent efficiency when used to provide both heat and power.' It produces enough power to run a moderate-sized grocery store, or five homes. A smaller, home-sized unit is on the way. Is the municipal power plant on the way out?"
Unless the amortized annual cost is low (Score:5, Interesting)
The municipal power plant isn't going anywhere.
Our house has all electric utilities - stove, oven water heater, dryer, home heating (in-wall heaters, no central furnace). I'm too lazy to add up the exact numbers, but we're probably paying $2000-2500 a year for electricity (Washington state).
Re:Unless the amortized annual cost is low (Score:4, Insightful)
What you're forgetting is that in WA we have some of the lowest prices on electricity in the country. Thanks to the WPA dams that the federal government gave us and the Californians that are incapable of producing enough electricity to cover their needs.
In much of the rest of the country, the cost of electricity is substantially higher, so one of these would be cost effective much more quickly.
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Incapable, no. Unwilling.
Re:Unless the amortized annual cost is low (Score:5, Informative)
(1) The pipe is as easy to break as the power line
My experience:
Frequency of electricity outages: About every six months. More when I lived where thunderstorms are common.
Frequency of gas outages: Never. Not even once. In my entire life.
(2) It's more efficient to generate power on a large scale
This is only true for generators. It is NOT true for fuel cells, which is what this article is about. Fuel cells benefit little from "scale", and not enough to offset the transmission losses you avoid with local generation.
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Electric outage frequency really depends on your local weather and infrastructure. Neighborhoods with buried lines have a lot fewer outages than those with above-ground lines, for example.
Where I currently live, there hasn't been an outage in several years.
Re:Unless the amortized annual cost is low (Score:4, Informative)
Electric outage frequency really depends on your local weather and infrastructure. Neighborhoods with buried lines have a lot fewer outages than those with above-ground lines, for example.
Electricity is still far less reliable than gas. A lightning strike can send a voltage surge for miles, up and down trunk lines. There is nothing analogous for gas. With gas, any break can be quickly isolated. Electricity has to be delivered within a narrow voltage range, but gas pressure can fluctuate much more widely. If you have one of these dishwasher sized fuel cells, you could also install a gas storage tank that could store a day or two of gas, so even if there was a gas interruption, you could keep the fuel cell going.
Re:Unless the amortized annual cost is low (Score:4, Informative)
In Melbourne, Australia; town of ~3.5 million, maybe 15 years ago there was an explosion at our primary Natural Gas plant.
We had no gas for almost 2 weeks.
Many houses here are gas hot water, gas stove tops and gas ovens.
Cold showers for 2 weeks was no fun.
Having said that; there has been "significant" (1 hour+) power outages maybe once or twice in the last 15 years in my area...?
But; certainly not the entire city. So; gas *can* go out, but electricity certainly goes out more often.
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Delivered gas bottles never go out. A 45kg bottle supplies an average size house with hot water and cooking for 3 or 4 months, depending on season. It's cheaper than articulated gas too.
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We have had power outages extending nearly 24 hours, and the fluctuations make battery backup systems a must for any important electronic device. The town at the actual end of the trunk got federal
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(2) It's more efficient to generate power on a large scale
This is only true for generators. It is NOT true for fuel cells, which is what this article is about. Fuel cells benefit little from "scale", and not enough to offset the transmission losses you avoid with local generation.
Ummm.... underlying assumption in your statement: the maintenance cost of fuel cells are low enough. For example: it may not happen if the catalysts need frequent replacement - the power company can afford discounts for "bulk buying" those catalysts and their replacement costs will be lower than the sum of all individual costs for calling a technician at the premises.
Re:Unless the amortized annual cost is low (Score:5, Informative)
> There is *no* use case for generating power from natgas coming in through a pipe.
Er... I guess you don't live in Florida, or along the Atlantic or Gulf Coasts. Natural Gas is just about the *ideal* fuel for home generators smaller than ~10KW. It's not the most efficient, but if you're buying it to make sure you can have air conditioning and charged batteries for a few days/weeks after a hurricane, absolute efficiency is less important than low ceremony and minimal preventative maintenance needs, because you're really only going to use it for more than 2-4 weeks *maybe* twice in 50 years, and the rest of the time it might get 1-5 days of use in an average year. Natural gas generators aren't *quite* 100% maintenance-free, but they're about as close to it as an average consumer is likely to get.
Regular gasoline generators suck, especially if you live somewhere with high-ethanol gas. It turns to varnish unless you run the generator every few weeks, and turns to varnish after a few years even if you *do* unless you double the gas cost by adding fuel stabilizer too.
Diesel generators are ungodly expensive in the US, at least in smaller sizes. I don't think I've ever even SEEN a diesel generator in the US smaller than 15-25 kilowatts. I think it's due to environmental reasons, because my coworkers from India said that small diesel generators are cheap and common there.
That said, if you don't have natural gas available via pipe & have to settle for propane, give some major thought to the logistics involved. Blue Rhino is NOT a viable option for generator use (due to both post-hurricane logistics and cost), and in all of Dade & Broward Counties, I think there are *maybe* 3 or 4 places where you can show up with empty customer-owned cylinders and fill them without getting raped. You really need enough cylinder capacity to get you through 3-4 days... and if you're running a 5-10KW generator around the clock to run a window air conditioner or two, that means you're going to need about 200-300lbs of LPG and 2-3 cylinders. 80lb cylinders aren't cheap -- even when used -- so make sure you factor the cost of them into your cost comparison. The cylinder-acquisition costs can EASILY double the amount you're going to have to spend to buy a 5-8KW propane generator.
While I'm at it, if you're still reading this far and live in Florida... here's the abbreviated version of my hurricane generator info.
* Be aware that you need AT LEAST 2,500 running watts and ~3,000 starting watts to reliably run even a small window air conditioner without holding your breath and praying every time you go to start it up.
* When shopping, check to see whether the generator is 120v ONLY , or also does 240v. If it outputs 240v, that probably means that each 120v circuit can only handle HALF the generator's advertised output... and that if you present it with radically unbalanced loads (ie, air conditioner on one leg, battery chargers on the other), it's going to run badly & your fuel economy will go down the toilet (assuming it doesn't stall or have other problems). The moral: it just might be worth spending a little more to get an inverter-type generator that gives you the full rated output power on a single leg, or buying a 7-10KW generator and running TWO window units with it (one on each leg), with your remaining loads divided between the two legs.
* If you want to run exactly one window unit on a generator whose capacity is a little on the low side, you might have to hack the air conditioner and graft a starter capacitor onto it (central AC units have them, but window units almost never do). You might also have to get creative and rewire the compressor & fan controls, so you can start up one, then start up the other a couple of seconds later.
* Another option, if you don't need 240v, is to rewire the generator so it has only a single 120v leg.
* Inductive loads (including anything with a motor) are "different" from resistive loads (like incandescent lights), the advertised
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I'm too lazy to add up the exact numbers
The prototype is 25 kW, that's metric assload of power. Probably enough for your house and one or two of the neighbors depending on how much you run the A/C.
Your power bill is pretty high.
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The municipal power plant isn't going anywhere.
Our house has all electric utilities - stove, oven water heater, dryer, home heating (in-wall heaters, no central furnace). I'm too lazy to add up the exact numbers, but we're probably paying $2000-2500 a year for electricity (Washington state).
Another way of saying: it may go by the time the patent expire (if, at the time, the power production is still mainly generated by burning fossil fuels and we didn't run off natural gas until then).
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The municipal power plant isn't going anywhere.
Well, they might go the way of Dodo. Once the patent expires, some may use the published paper [redoxpowersystems.com] and a sufficiently advanced 3D printer to get their your own fuel cell.
(letting aside the tongue-in-cheek tone, my main point above: here's an article with details on the technology. Others as well [redoxpowersystems.com])
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Quite right, except that it wouldn't actually be centralized. Firstly they would (potentially) be independent of the power distribution company, and secondly if most people are supplying for their own average power demand then the total amount of power flowing long distances over the grid would be much lower, and with it the distribution losses. Moreover a halfway decent grid would be extremely resistant to power outages - there's no reason a neighborhood couldn't keep operating indefinitely without access
Question asked... (Score:3, Insightful)
Answer is no.
While it would be awesome to have your own power plant. You're fighting aginst alot of money.
Won't happen anytime soon.
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If is cheap/simple enough to build and not patent encumbered could happen. People already uses natural gas for home heathing, if uses instead this for electricity (and if is efficient enough) could be a very possitive thing.
In the other hand, could be cheap/simple enough to build and have a metric ton of patents all around, forbidding anyone else to even try to make a solution. Then it could be something very damaging.
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The best thing about it will be people who want to live off the grid back in the back side of nowhere. One of these and a Sat dish and you can stay connected while being far, far away.
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That's true today, too. You'd just be generating electricity by burning that propane/kerosene/etc. in an engine, rather than a fuel cell.
Hell, except for internet service, it was true many, many decades ago, when humans pulled TV channels right out of the air, and all you "packets" of information got batch delivered to a small box you had to periodically poll...
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You'd just be generating electricity by burning that propane/kerosene/etc. in an engine, rather than a fuel cell.
Um... no. I'd be looking at microhydro sites if I were to go off the grid.
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And that relates to fuel cells ... How?
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What? I'm pretty sure both of the 'main' parties are like that.
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If that's a concern, then I recommend you stop voting GOP. They're the ones that tend to be very vocally opposed to anything that might harm corporate profits.
Exactly! It was the Republicans that voted for the bank bailout ... oops, no wait, that was the Democrats. Well, it was the Republicans that voted for the bailout of GM ... oops, that was the Democrats too. Well, it was the Republicans that supported the taxpayer subsidies for Solnydra ... no? Dang, Democrats again. Gee, this isn't looking so good.
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you do realize there were very few republicans dissenting against bailing out those companies.
Indeed the bank bail out was designed by republicans before Obama took office and was barely modified afterwards(by either party).
The real trick is the democrats support one type of companies(usually RIAA and their pets) While republicans protect military, and oil companies.
You get to choose which is the lesser of two evils, and remember who wrote up the DCMA.
Re:Question asked... (Score:4, Informative)
you do realize there were very few republicans dissenting against bailing out those companies.
Let's look at the facts [congressmatters.com]:
Number of Republicans voting NO for both bailouts: 13
Number of Democrats voting NO for both bailouts: 1
Number of Republicans voting YES for both bailouts: 6
Number of Democrats voting YES for both bailouts: 35
Re:Question asked... (Score:4, Informative)
Marked as informative but misleading. You mention both the bank and auto bailouts, but forgot the most important figure when comparing them:
Number of senators who voted for the bank bailouts but NOT the auto bailout:
Republicans: 18
Democrats: 2
That means that 24 republicans in the house voted for the bank bailouts, and 15 voted against. Or to put it another way, 61.15% of republicans voted for the bank bailouts. That's a caucus super majority.
So yes, both parties supported the bank bailouts. And most American's think they stunk (and they did). There was no direct benefit to the tax payer. Though, if you're being honest there was a HUGE indirect effect: we didn't have economic collapse and ruin. It was a crappy place to be - the democrats and republicans had to vote to bailout the banks or we'd have been in a massive world wide depression.
The 100% republicans didn't vote for it was simply to save face. Yeah, I said it. It was to save face because it was going to pass no matter what but they didn't want to be the guys who deregulated the industry, allowing for the colossal screw up in the first place, and then use the US taxpayers to bail it out.
Now back to the auto bailout. The auto bailout on the other hand did directly affect MANY MANY American's. It allowed Chrysler to find a home (ironically, saving not just the butts of American auto workers, but also of the former bush administration colleagues who owned the company at the time and steered them towards only making huge gas sucking crap cars, and killing off well selling and loved cars like the Neon, which had a small car following and tuner community), allowed Ford to stay afloat, and GM to get reorganized.
In the end the auto bailout was structured in a way that the government would get it's money back plus interest. This bailout was orchestrated by the democrats, and it worked - the US tax payer got it's money back, plus interest, and kept a crap load of jobs.
Comparing that to the bank bailout orchestrated by the republicans (whose policies of bank deregulation cause the problem) where the only thing the tax payer got was the middle finger, foreclosed homes, robosigning?
And that's why context matters. Posting some figures (which while technically true) doesn't tell the whole story. The whole story is more complex than the figures alone. The whole story is that the republicans knew it would pass with a democratically controlled senate - cause there's no way the democrats, in control of the senate, would let the country delve into the deepest depression in history. They knew it would also be unpopular, yet necessary. So some of them voted against. And for the ones who did it on principle - e.g. the freshmen tea partiers? Those guys were loons. If the guys who voted AGAINST the bank bailout had been in majority we'd all be majorly hosed right now.
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Re:Question asked... (Score:5, Insightful)
Answer is no.
While it would be awesome to have your own power plant. You're fighting aginst alot of money.
Won't happen anytime soon.
I assume that 'Big Power' is why ordinary liquid-fuel internal combustion generators can only be obtained on the black market, if you have the right connections, after their brutal suppression? Oh, wait, no, generators are ubiquitous and relatively cheap, they're just a pain in the ass to maintain.
There is certainly a fair amount of capital tied up in generation and distribution infrastructure; but there are some points to remember:
The power company isn't pleased by your fluctuating demand: In an ideal world of steady demand, you could get away with exclusively operating the absolute cheapest (generally a polite way of saying 'coal', except in very good hydro areas) base-load plants 24/7, and size your distribution infrastructure to that load, with a dash of margin for safety. Nice, easy, lowest cost per kilowatt hour. In the real world, with demand fluctuating throughout the day(lights/no lights, commercial facilities open vs. after hours, etc.), throughout the year (A/C in summer, some heating in winter, little of either in spring and fall), and potentially over the longer term(population increases and decreases in a given area, movements of power-intensive industries, turnover of housing stock, improvements or decreases in gadget efficiency), the problem is more complex.
Short term fluctuations mean having to size the grid with peak load in mind (lest you risk some really hairy cascading failures) and mean having to have peak-load plants (often combined cycle natural gas) sitting idle part of the time and burning more-expensive-than-coal fuel the rest of the time. More capital invested, higher cost per kilowatt hour. Seasonal variations potentially mean even more facilities sitting idle, depreciating, part of the time, and longer-term variations mean wacky fun with demand forecasting and the potential for either customer displeasure or wasted facilities built for demand that never came.
If somebody announced, tomorrow, that their 'Unobtanium Plot-point Reactor' could fully replace all legacy electrical infrastructure, it is indeed likely that there would be some... industry unhappiness. However, any widget that costs more than base-load generation and distribution and can be used at the customer site to reduce demand fluctuation and function as a backup unit is a mutually beneficial arrangement: The utility gets closer to their ideal of 100% stable demand, the customer has a backup/peak generator that is ideally less obnoxious than the old diesel unit.
Plus, of course, for any given advance in power generation, there isn't anything stopping a large-scale producer from running the device at a large scale (with capital investment, and engineers on site, and other handy stuff) and offering the result for sale. Unless the transmission overheads or profits are usurious, many people probably don't want to coddle their own generator when they can just plug in for not much. Since the ability of utilities to individualize chargers based on precise per-person expense (ie. transmission line distance, difficulty of terrain, etc.) is typically constrained by some mixture of inadequate information and regulation, the customers who are least impressed by the centralized service (say the ones who live at the flaky edges of the grid, and deal with lots of exciting blackouts and issues, or in an area with brownout problems at peak) are also the customers that are likely to be least profitable.
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I'd be interested in seeing this scaled up to power plant size, and then using its heat output to run steam turbines for MOAR POWAH!
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I'd be interested in seeing this scaled up to power plant size, and then using its heat output to run steam turbines for MOAR POWAH!
Good luck running your turbine with steam at 160C. You might want to read up on the second law of thermodynamics.
Re:Question asked... (Score:5, Interesting)
Why? this is perfect for CARS. Dishwasher sized will fit into most full size cars right now. creates electricity at low heat, which mean actual practical electric cars.
you change the fuel source to something other than oil.
Even better at 25kw that is enough to run the majority of homes.
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That was my first thought. However, 25KW is only 33 horsepower. You could make a hybrid, I suppose with a battery pack for acceleration and one of these to top it off and as a "range extender" ala the Volt. The Volt has a 75KW (100 HP) internal combustion engine so it's within reason.
Vehicle choice isn't so simple (Score:3)
25kW/33hp is more than adequate if people could only let go of the idea that their cars need to weigh two tonnes and have a large overcapacity for the majority of their needs.
There are a lot more considerations than just fuel economy for most of us.
A single-occupant commuter vehicle with a space frame and carbon fibre body weighing more like 500kg would have excellent performance with 25kW.
So we're supposed to buy a second car just to commute to/from work? Very few people have the luxury of buying a car just to handle their daily commute. If you're one who does, good for you. The rest of us are going to remain stuck making tradeoffs among the various requirements of our lives.
Average # of passengers is almost always >1 so your proposed vehicle immediately becomes useless the moment you need to carry a passenger.
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Summary (Score:4, Funny)
It will never work.
It's been done before.
They'll get bought out.
The laws of themodynamics make everything impossible.
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It will never work.
It's been done before.
They'll get bought out.
The laws of themodynamics make everything impossible.
I can't believe you got modded down to a -1. There is something called "humor" that many people on this site are unfamiliar with, possibly unless you hit them over the head with it.
Re:Summary (Score:5, Informative)
A solar cell takes far more energy (likely coal or oil) to produce than the panel will ever, EVER, get back in its usable life.
Wrong, a solar cell will produce 6x as much energy over it's life as it took to produce. That factor is continuing to increase. It's not as good as most other electric power sources, but it edges out nuclear's 5x. http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2013/03/energy-return-on-investment-which-fuels-win [carbonbrief.org]
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Actually there have been significant improvements in the manufacturing process and the general solar cell efficiency that may make that statement incorrect. I haven't looked at the math in some time, but they have made significant advances in solar cell production such that I don't think they actually are a net loss in energy now.
Is the municipal power plant on the way out?" (Score:3)
Only if the cost of the fuel cell pack + installation, and the on-going cost of propane (not natural gas??) is cheaper over 3-4 years than the cost of electricity.
In places where power goes out during storms, it might be fruitful to get one anyway.
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it'll take natural gas. RTFA. it'll take that horrible e85 stuff too. hell, you could probably feed it on corn syrup if you're going down that route.
Re: Is the municipal power plant on the way out?" (Score:4, Interesting)
There is one place where a fuel cell that can work with butane and propane would have a -ton- of demand: The RV industry.
As it stands now, most RVs come with absorption refrigerators. These units have the advantage of being able to work with a boiler and a propane flame as well as an electric resistance element. However, they will destroy themselves if run off-level (the sodium chromate which is used as a rust blocker gets "cooked" out, and eventually will completely block the tube, cause a small pinhole leak. From there, the ammonia leaks out and the refrigerator is done for.
A range of absorption refrigerators have been also recalled, because there are reports of them causing fires.
Having a propane fuel cell means that the absorption refrigerator can be given the heave-ho. Instead, the fuell cell can charge the house batteries, and a compressor refrigerator that runs from 12 volts or 120/240VAC via an alternator can be used. This setup would be functionally identical to having to use the absorption fridge, but without the worry about having to have the RV perfectly level. Compressor fridges cool their contents a lot faster than the absorption fridge counterparts as well.
So, even though propane fuel cells wouldn't be useful for primary electricity, they would come in handy with RVs.
As another advantage, the power from a fuel cell would offset the electricity used to power a RV furnace's fans, which means that one doesn't have to have a loud generator or run a vehicle's engine for recharging. For people boondocking, one of the biggest considerations is running a generator as little as possible, because even the quiet ones do make noise.
If this Redox model can be scaled down to 5 kilowatts, this would completely replace the inefficient generator on the RV (generators have the Otto engine cycle which loses a good chunk of energy out the exhaust pipe coupled with the losses of energy from turning rotational energy into electrical. A fuel cell would use a fraction of the propane a propane generator uses.) This would allow running the air conditioner and microwave and other electric appliances.
Take this smaller to being able to do 300-500 watts, and this will compete with the EFOY fuel cells that are used in combination with solar charging systems to keep batteries topped off.
I'm hoping some commercial products come from this. Truma in Europe has a usable propane fuel cell, as well as top notch RV water heaters and furnaces... but they seem to have no interest in selling their products across the pond, and US water heaters and furnaces can be viewed as extremely primitive in comparison. For example, a Truma water heater has a passive mechanism to drain it when the water inside hits 35 degrees to prevent it from getting damaged due to freezing. No US heater has this.
isn't anything huge for normal people (Score:2)
I hope they have better demonstrative powers... (Score:3)
80% *including* waste heat (Score:3)
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Go find a 100% efficient condensing boiler and get back to me.
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I have a two stage condensing gas furnace. At stage 1 it spec'ed is 99.5% efficient. At stage 2 it is 98% efficient. When checked during yearly service it meets or exceeds these specs.
I don't know why a NG fuel cell/heating system couldn't be built to similar specs (for winter operation anyway).
Nothing new, but good luck to them (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing new here. Identical tech dates back at least to 2009:
http://www.cerespower.com/Technology/TheCeresCell/ [cerespower.com]
There's no question that fuel cells, that can run on the same fossil fuels we use now, would be a huge step forward, if they could be made cheaply enough. They exceed Carnot efficiency, so a fuel cell that ran on unleaded gasoline would instantly double even the best hybrid vehicle fuel efficiency. Large natural gas power plants would get perhaps a 50% improvement in efficiency. Fuel cells running on methanol are quite popular in forklifts because they are zero emissions, lower maintenance and get more run-time than batteries, according to the DoE.
They'd be a great replacement for generators as well. Imagine a fuel cell in every cellular tower, with a CNG tank on-site in case both the power and gas lines fail (and can be refilled by truck). Imagine your central heating boiler being for home and water heating was generating free electricity as well as heat for a combined ~80% efficiency (almost as good as condensing boiler). Imagine every city block has a fuel cell the size of a utility cabinet, reducing transmission losses and easing strain on the power grid.
High efficiency, plus fuel flexibility, plus almost zero maintenance (and nearly no noise), and little pollution, makes these things possible, where they aren't all that practical with conventional heat/combustion engines.
imagine a firefighter's worse nightmare (Score:2)
Imagine a fuel cell in every cellular tower, with a CNG tank on-site in case both the power and gas lines fail (and can be refilled by truck). Imagine your central heating boiler being for home and water heating was generating free electricity as well as heat for a combined ~80% efficiency (almost as good as condensing boiler). Imagine every city block has a fuel cell the size of a utility cabinet, reducing transmission losses and easing strain on the power grid.
Imagine a firefighter's worse nightmare:
Elec
Re:imagine a firefighter's worse nightmare (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a famous saying that if Natural gas was developed and proposed for residential use today (for the first time) everyone would freak out because of how dangerous it is.
Every house in areas that already have natural gas heating already have everything you claim to be worried about.Gas is actually incredibly safe, it needs a precise mixture with oxygen to be explosive or burn. Yet it still kills thousands every year.
Its paranoia like yours that handicaps society.
One of the key benefits of this (Score:2)
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And gas lines don't ever leak.
There will always be some form of transmission los. Hopefully over the long haul, losses due to pipeline leakage, or storage tank leakage will be a significantly lower percentage compared to high tension power line loss. I'll agree that it's likely to be less than 50%, and presumably less than 30% (which combined with the 20% unrecovered waste in an 80% efficient fuel cell would come to a 50% loss.) but there will be some appreciable loss due to leakage. Heck you loose gasoline
Re:One of the key benefits of this (Score:4, Informative)
My understanding is that up to half the energy available at a large plant can be lost through the resistance (heat conversion) and other factors (induction?) in the lines before it gets to it's point of use.
No, average loss from power plant to customer is about 7%. Even very long (1000+ mile) HVDC lines only add a few percent.
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it would be worth it only if (Score:2)
And it's called the Perpetuum Mobile! (Score:2)
Sorry, it's hard not to be snarky with claims of energy breakthroughs. There is always a trade-off. What is it?
No more hockey stick (Score:2)
Gee, this is going to throw out the doomsday scenarios of all those neo-ecovists who claim our increasing energy consumption and pollution are going to destroy the planet.
1) The planet really doesn't give a hoot.
2) Energy usage is getting more efficient - my new freezer, refrigerator, computer, fan, van all use far less energy to do the same work as pervious models.
3) Power generation technology is dramatically improving with things like co-generation fuel cells, micro-hydro, micro-solar, etc.
My personal fa
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Too bad it will cost you about 10 billion dollars to get the required permits, if it's at all possible.
"can run at an 80 percent efficiency" ??? (Score:2)
It is NOT Diverse Energy! (Score:5, Informative)
Never going to happen. (Score:3)
There is no way they will ever get approval with the cronyism walking around to ever have someone generate all of their own electricity.
People are already being targeted for growing their own food by "STORM TROOPERS" which barge in with machine guns and kill everyone and ask questions later.
That includes a bullet for the family dog, cat and canary.
People don't understand what is going on with power, and forget the whole ENRON thing (which is still going on by the way, it just changed hands to people who are unaccountable.)
There is no way the Oil/Electric Gas companies will permit such a device _ever_.
-Hack
These stories are always frustrating (Score:2)
In favor of power plant (Score:2)
Is the municipal power plant on the way out?
The power plant comes with power lines that reach houses. If that is replaced by distributed fuel cells, unless there is a municipal pipeline network, the fuel has to be carried by vehicles, and I have trouble to understand how it could be more efficient in the end.
some details would be nice (Score:3)
secondly, how long is the lifetime of the unit? how much fuel can it process before the catalyst or membrane or whatever wears out? and how expensive is the catalyst? is it still made out of freaking platinum?
thirdly, can this thing be used in vehicles? planes? cause thats the real application of something like this.
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http://www.powerserg.com/redox-powerserg-the-cube-specs.html [powerserg.com]
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ok, firstly, that "80% efficiency when it provides both heat and power" is a copout. any engine can be 100% efficient when you classify usable energy output as both heat and electricity. i wanna know the efficiency of the electricity production.
It's not a "copout" because the heat generated isn't waste heat (since it is useable by the house it is connected to). This is unlike an ICE or central powerplant where it IS waste heat.
The typical fuel cell has an efficiency of between 40-60% for electrical generation only. Their website indicates that it is at the higher end of that scale.
secondly, how long is the lifetime of the unit? how much fuel can it process before the catalyst or membrane or whatever wears out? and how expensive is the catalyst? is it still made out of freaking platinum?
It's amazing what you can learn when you RTFA. The membrane they use is based on ceramics (solid oxide). They're durable and less expensive than platinum.
thirdly, can this thing be used in vehicles? planes? cause thats the real application of something like this.
They're plannin
Cars? (Score:2)
Can these things be scaled to smaller sizes and are they rugged (resistant to vibration, etc.)? If so, they'd be great for cars.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Subtle economics (Score:2)
Awesome (Score:3)
Sign me up (Score:2)
I'm willing to overpay for one of these. I really believe that a lot of good can come from off-the-grid power, and I would invest to help that happen.
So much of our lives is about how this corporation or that government agency has us by the balls. So much of our politics is payback. How something like this could change the balance of power back toward the hands of the individual!
It's not just traditional energy companies that worry about something like that happening. There's a lot of entrenched power i
Although I'd love to be wrong... (Score:2)
Re:More ripping off the taxpayer (Score:5, Informative)
How the fuck is something like this insightful?! Every single line is full of bullshit, by someone who clearly have no idea how things work, and is just getting talking lines from somewhere.
If it was funded by the University, you can bet your ass the University will get is share.
For example, Google's famous PageRank patent is owned by Stanford:
http://contracts.onecle.com/google/stanford.lic.2003.10.13.shtml [onecle.com]
http://www.clickonf5.org/10824/google-pagerank-license-expire-2011/ [clickonf5.org]
Fucking moron moderators as well. Insightful my ass. You whole lot should be the ones locked up for sprouting lies on the Internet.
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this man needs the mods.
Re:More ripping off the taxpayer (Score:5, Funny)
And some tranks.
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Don't hold back man. Tell us how you really feel.
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Of course it would vary from university to university, but the AC made a blanket statement and basically found every single professor guilty. That is simply stupid.
Re:More ripping off the taxpayer (Score:5, Insightful)
Source: NSF funded researcher. Disclaimer: NSF-funded researcher.
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Taxes have funded our advances for decades.
Where have you been?
Thing is, businesses wouldn't fund much of the research that gets done... and for good reason: most of it doesn't result in profitable technologies and products.
We wouldn't be #1 if we didn't fund this research.
Personally, I would reduce defense and increase research spending by a factor of ten.
Re:More ripping off the taxpayer (Score:5, Insightful)
"We wouldn't be #1 if we didn't fund this research."
Sure you would.
#1 The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and the largest total prison population on the entire globe.
#2 According to NationMaster.com, the United States has the highest percentage of obese people in the world.
#3 The United States has the highest divorce rate on the globe by a wide margin.
#4 The United States is tied with the U.K. for the most hours of television watched per person each week.
#5 The United States has the highest rate of illegal drug use on the entire planet.
#6 There are more car thefts in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world by far.
#7 There are more reported rapes in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world.
#8 There are more reported murders in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world.
#9 There are more total crimes in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world.
#10 The United States also has more police officers than anywhere else in the world.
#11 The United States spends much more on health care as a percentage of GDP than any other nation on the face of the earth.
#12 The United States has more people on pharmaceutical drugs than any other country on the planet.
#13 The percentage of women taking antidepressants in America is higher than in any other country in the world.
#14 Americans have more student loan debt than anyone else in the world.
#15 More pornography is created in the United States than anywhere else on the entire globe. 89 percent is made in the U.S.A. and only 11 percent is made in the rest of the world.
#16 The United States has the largest trade deficit in the world every single year. Between December 2000 and December 2010, the United States ran a total trade deficit of 6.1 trillion dollars with the rest of the world, and the U.S. has had a negative trade balance every single year since 1976.
#17 The United States spends 7 times more on the military than any other nation on the planet does. In fact, U.S. military spending is greater than the military spending of China, Russia, Japan, India, and the rest of NATO combined.
#18 The United States has far more foreign military bases than any other country does.
#19 The United States has the most complicated tax system in the entire world.
#20 The U.S. has accumulated the biggest national debt that the world has ever seen and it is rapidly getting worse. Right now, U.S. government debt is expanding at a rate of $40,000 per second.
Re:More ripping off the taxpayer (Score:5, Funny)
Go USA!
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I like how you play fast and loose with the facts, like arbitrarily switching back and forth between absolute values and per-capita values, depending on which one puts the US at the top...
1) The US is only #1 in incarcerations because China is #1 in executions...
2) Obesity is falling slightly in the US, while other countries are rising. Some reports say the UK has surpassed the US, but in a few years the US will definitely lose it's #1 spot.
3) Divorce and marriage laws could use some reforms.
4) TV is NO
Re:More ripping off the taxpayer (Score:4, Interesting)
Our taxes go on that kind of thing because without funding it, the scientists will leave to other countries, and in 5 years time this is what you will have:
An economy trying to recover, just about
No researchers with cool ideas for how to spend the money you now have on projects that could run the economy for the next while
No graduates from uni worth anything because they've had no one worth anything teaching them anything.
Basically, because the people who are running the country have some foresight, and realise that we need to spend money to make money. Unlike you, you idiot.
Re:More ripping off the taxpayer (Score:5, Informative)
The universities and other entities involved with funding the research are not shafted when these startups happen. Spinoff companies are great for universities. They get paid for their ownership on the patent(s).
I work at a research management company.
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The universities and other entities involved with funding the research are not shafted when these startups happen. Spinoff companies are great for universities. They get paid for their ownership on the patent(s).
It will never get off the ground if there are no wires for the power companies to meter it.
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Gas companies would happily back this against the power companies. Probably will not be cost effective for the average person for a very long time. I'm curious about whether this would follow the same buy back requirements offered to solar panel power generation.
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I'll bring the rope.
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“Can every headline ending in a question mark be answered by the word 'no'?”
Also, it's not a headline. *runs*
Yes! (Score:3)
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I didn't see any for sale on that site.
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It's an energy conversion device. It converts fuel to electricity.
Re:Fuel cell - storage device or generator? (Score:4, Informative)
More specifically it converts specific types of fuel to energy. Usually Hydrogen and Oxygen get converted to Water, and the reaction releases an appreciable amount of dc voltage.
Systems like this that take propane, or natural gas, (pretty much any hydrocarbon fuel is an option, though as the chains get longer you run into other problems, we're not likely to see conversion of tar to electricity any time soon) first strip the hydrogen out of the hydrocarbon, and capture and sequester, or release the remaining carbon,
This works as long as that fuel source is not cost prohibitive. You're not likely to get Reliant to deliver a gas line to the middle of no where just so you can have electricity, and if you decide to go with delivered propane, I recommend spending time actually running your entire load off the system to see what your usage patern would be like if the AC line were cut for several days at a time, and size your propane delivery and reserve to support those needs. (Do remember to allow for additional load that may be seasonal, for example lines brought down by an ice storm in the middle of winter are probably going to result in a different demand pattern for the propane than wind storm in the middle of summer. It's also likely to result in different delivery limitations of the propane, and power restoration by the AC provider.)
An alternative to natural gas would be to electrolicize water using solar or wind power (or even a small hydroelectric plant,) then use a straight hydrogen and oxygen fuel cell to recombine the molecules as your demand for power comes up. There are issues with this of course, you're going to have to find a way to stuff the hydrogen into something that you can extract it from later, though there are a number of possibilities for that already. No real need to worry about the Oxygen molecules. The percentage of O2 in the atmosphere is high enough that most fuel cell systems that work in earth normal atmosphere can use it. (you run into issues in space and deep sea situations, and in theory on other planets, but we're pretty much ignoring those situations here.
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the cell part, yes. the fuel part, no.
think of it as like a battery that doesn't carry the electrochemical stuff with it, but takes it from fuel.
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Fuel cells are generators. You put something in and you get electricity out. The specific mechanism may vary a bit, but ultimately, the point is that you wind up with electricity, so it's a generator.
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In my limited understanding, I believe it's both. A fuel cell is a device that converts the chemical energy from a fuel into electricity through a chemical reaction with oxygen or another oxidizing agent. [wikipedia.org] Therefore if there is fuel in it, it's generating electricity. If the fuel is sitting in a tank beside it, it's storage... I think my interpretation is a somewhat liberal interpretation of those ideas. And I don't know what what maintenance is required. Eg Is it bad to leave it dry for long periods of time
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I had thought fuel cell was an energy storage device, not a generator?
There isn't actually a strict boundary, it just depends on how much of the universe you wish to consider:
A fuel cell is always a means of turning inputs with chemical potential energy into electricity, at some loss from inefficiency. If you start your calculations with synthesizing your inputs (cracking water for hydrogen, say), you will need more energy to produce the fuel (because that is also inefficient) than you will ever gain by sending it through the fuel cell. It's just a way of moving/storing the e
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Hydrogen electrolysis is a bulky, low-efficiency battery. You've got two major losses of efficiency, electrolysis to produce the hydrogen, and the fact that hydrogen leaks like crazy.
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Bloombox anyone
Maybe better [redoxpowersystems.com]. Page 5: