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?"
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.
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.
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.
It is NOT Diverse Energy! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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.
Re:One of the key benefits of this (Score:2, Informative)
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: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: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.
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]
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.
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