In today’s Remainders: things lurking below the surface. Literally, a fuel cell-powered fish. Less literally, ISP’s seething contempt for the FCC’s new National Broadband Plan. Also: Samsung’s David Lee Roth tablet love and a helicopter with rocket-powered blades. Yikes. More »
More: continued here
Well, that didn’t take long. Already analysts are crawling out of the woodwork to put the seemingly miraculous Bloom Box fuel cell in its place as yet another energy saving technology that won’t perform as advertised.
This week it was IDC Energy Insights analyst Sam Jaffe, who said that while the fuel cell developed by Bloom Energy CEO K.R Sridhar and his team was definitely “not bogus,” it just doesn’t differentiate itself well enough from already available fuel cell technologies—especially as it pertains to price.
And the device’s supposedly unique “fuel-switching” ability? Not unique at all, Jaffe claimed on his Energy Insight blog, in a post titled “Four Things Bloom Energy Forgot to Tell the World”:
“Any high-temperature fuel cell should be able to do that. The fact that it’s solid oxide and it’s primarily ceramic opens up the possibility of making it much more cheaply, but every start-up in the energy field has an expensive product that they claim one day will be cheap. There is no reason to believe that Bloom has the ability to make it that much more cheaply. I’m pretty pessimistic about it.”
Indeed. Further…fueling Jaffe’s pessimism is the belief that a Bloom Box isn’t really all that green if you’re comparing it to the way we traditionally get power from the grid. At a cost of $7-$8/watt, he contends, the miracle box is no less expensive than photovoltaics that have been purchased at a rate of 100 kW at a time.
Another miracle energy tech bites the dust? Unless Bloom Energy can curb costs and green things up a bit, the answer for now is “maybe.” Unless the unicorns get involved, anyway.
Still confused about fuel cells and the Bloom Box? Be sure to check out our regular Giz Explains column on this very topic! [IDC via CNET]
More: continued here
The Bloom Box is the latest energy miracle that sounds too good to be true: Debuting with a wide-eyed segment on 60 Minutes, it promises to be clean, cheap and backyard-friendly, the solution to our energy problems. What is it?
The heart of the box is a fuel cell. Though Bloom Energy‘s CEO K.R. Sridhar—a former NASA scientist—says it’s a new kind of fuel cell. And though it’s cleaner than any combustion engine out there, it still relies on fossil fuels and biofuels—not just hydrogen, like some other kinds of fuel cells do. Nevertheless, the folks at Bloom are doing something that could help make reduced emissions a reality for big businesses first, and then later, for homes.
To get a good grip on why we should care about this thing, let’s first look at the basics of fuel cell technology.
Like a battery, a fuel cell is an electrochemical cell, basically meaning it derives electricity from chemical reactions. Sandwiched between two electrodes—an anode and a cathode—is an ion-conducting material called an electrolyte. Fuel flows in one side, over the anode. An oxidant flows into the other side, over the cathode. What happens, very basically, is that the fuel and the oxidant react, like strangers locking eyes across a room. The metaphorical sparks that fly from that encounter are actual electrons, which flow into the fuel cell’s circuit. Bingo, electricity. As with any molecular reaction, the recombination of atoms produces some waste as well—like water or carbon dioxide. So while it’s cleaner, there’s definitely a byproduct.
To be clear, a fuel cell’s not like a battery; it’s like a power plant. Once it converts fuel to energy, it sends that energy out the door. And as such, it requires some peripheral way to physically storing the fuel ingredients, and some way to capture produced electricity—such as a battery.
There are a several different kinds of fuel cells—unsurprisingly, since they were invented in the 1830s. Generally, they are categorized based on what their electrolyte is made out of, but sometimes they’re referred to by their fuel and oxidant, which varies too. You’re probably most familiar with “hydrogen fuel cells,” like for cars and small electronics. These are in fact proton exchange membrane fuel cells, which happen to use hydrogen as a fuel and oxygen as an oxidant. (The PEM fuel cell is what is specifically diagrammed above.)
Bloom Energy’s Energy Servers are of the solid oxide variety of fuel cell. There’s two ways to do up an SOFC: A tubular design, which you can see above, or a planar design, which is what Bloom uses, as you can see below, since it allows them to be stacked into very neat boxes.
A solid oxide fuel cell is made out of all solid state materials—that is, every major component is made out of ceramic-like stuff. Bloom Energy claims their fuel cells are made out of “sand” baked into ceramic squares, and that’s just what an SOFC is. The exact material is a slightly secret sauce as are the black and green “inks” that coat the ceramic plates. Bloom’s got a pretty nice little Flash animation showing the basic process.
The major thing about an SOFC versus other fuel cells is that the material composition means they can run crazy hot—up to 1800ºF, says the US Department of Energy—and have to, since the ceramic materials don’t become active until they reach a certain temperature. Only at this temperature can they perform the chemical reactions with the fuel and oxidant we talked about above. The problem with the high operating temperatures is that traditionally it has lead to higher maintenance costs. You know, stuff breaks down. The goal for this technology is to have an “uptime” of 99.99%, as cited by cited by Scott Samuelsen, who’s the director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center at the University of California-Irvine. Bloom’s own trial at Google cites a 98% uptime.
The types of fuel cells you hear more about—the “methanol” ones that can already power laptops—do their business at a much lower temperature. Toshiba has one that typically runs at 120º to 200ºF. Though Bloom’s is obviously not a tech that could be a laptop’s power source, the Bloom Box’s higher operating temperature is a big advantage over “legacy” fuel cell technology. Bloom Energy VP of Marketing and Products Stu Aaron told me it gives them “fuel flexibility.” They can use biogases from land waste or fossil fuels like propane—so far in demos it’s been an even split between biogases and natural gas—whereas low-temp fuel cells require hydrogen in a much purer state that has to basically be refined or extracted via chemical processes.
While some other SOFCs use the hot exhaust generated by the reaction kind of like a cogen—a means of capturing heat emitted by a power generator, so that it too can be converted to electricity—Bloom’s Energy Servers simply recycle the heat within the cell, since the temperature generated by the reaction is almost exactly the heat needed for the reaction to happen. The rated efficiency spec for their current energy server is greater than 50%, compared to around 10% to 15% for solar (though University of Delaware-led researchers did recently hit a world’s record of 42.8% for solar).
Again, to be clear, the energy generated isn’t emission-free: These servers generate a small amount of CO2 when converting natural gas or bio-gas. It is less than what would get released if the same fuel was combusted, however. Customers can pick which of the two kinds of fuel they’d like to use; the trade off is between “optimizing for cost or carbon reduction,” depending on the company’s priorities, says Aaron.
Right now, the only box that Bloom is selling is a 100-kilowatt-hour energy server, which you can check out there. Inside are thousands of solid oxide fuel cells—each one able to power a light bulb. The cells are arranged in stacks, which are aggregated into modules, and so on, with a common fuel input. Right now, they’re just for corporations—like Google and Coca-Cola—and run about $700,000 to $800,000 each. The goal’s to get them down to three grand, where they’d be suitable for home use. That may still sound expensive, but they pay for themselves in 3-5 years, says Aaron, with an energy cost of 8-9 cents per kW hour vs. the 13-14 cents it typically costs in California. (It saved eBay $100,000 on their power bill.)
But cost is where the real skepticism comes in. Fuel cells aren’t a voodoo technology. They work. They produce energy. What analysts, and others, are wondering is whether Bloom’s really cracked the secret to making them cheap, at least some day. The critic that CBS trotted out on 60 Minutes, Green Tech Media’s Michael Kanellos, says that while there’s a 20 percent chance we’ll have a fuel cell box in our basements in 10 years, but “it’s going to say GE.” Which is fine with me, actually, because that means another season of 30 Rock jokes.
Still something you wanna know? Send questions about fuel cells, terrorist cells or Boom Blox here with “Giz Explains” in the subject line.
More: continued here
I’ve played with my fair share of LEGOs, but I never actually envied the little guys until I saw Dave DeGobbi’s Crawler Town, a work as impressively conceived as it is constructed. I’d forfeit bendable elbows to live in it.
It sort of reminds me of those old books on a single building—Castles or Pyramids or what have you—where you could look at the huge, detailed illustrations and imagine dozens of little stories unfolding in every corner.
Attention is even given to the world in which the Crawler Town dwells. As DeGobbi describes it:
Crawler town roams the barren wastes of a post steam-punk world after cataclysmic climate change do to excessive coal use. Several such cities exist but Crawler town is the most popular due to the Aero 500 hydrogen fuel cell Air races that are held. Many people travel the wastes to Crawler town for vacation and to enjoy rare luxuries like Pizza, fresh vegetables and Beer. Travelling the wastes in search of minerals and aquifers ( vital for survival) the mobility of the city keeps it away from the vicious sand storms of the wastes
I’m even willing to excuse the machine-city’s “Eco-punk” designation just because it’s so damn cool. [Flickr via Brothers Brick]
More: continued here
Still waiting for the day when you can fuel your car on nothing but hydrogen, and it’s only exhaust is in the form of water vapor, greatly reducing the collective output of pollution from transportation? Sorry, those aren’t economically viable yet. But, thanks to a company by the name of Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies, you can use hydrogen to fuel your iPhone instead, and that’s almost as good, right? No, I’m afraid I’m not kidding.
More: continued here
After officially taking over Sanyo earlier this week, Panasonic is hitting the ground running with a joint venture aimed at developing a powerful lithium-ion storage battery than could store enough juice to power an average [Japanese] home for a week.
The battery will also include a system that will allow users to monitor their electricity usage through their televisions. Seems like a viable alternative to solar batteries and fuel cells, but I’m curious to know how a week of powering a Japanese home equates to powering a typical American home. Either way, the technology won’t be available until sometime in 2011. [Physorg]
More: continued here
What if machines ran off biological fuel—blood sugar—from our bodies? Could we basically power gadgets on America’s increasing supply of body fat and Snickers bars?
The questions were thrown at me by our dear Brian Lam with a disclaimer of “I may have been under narcotic substances when I came up with this idea.” But, despite that disclaimer, he’s onto something. After all, we’ve looked at concept models of gadgets intended to be powered in that precise manner and there’s been some success in recent bio-battery research. So, why aren’t we sating both gadget lust and hunger in the same bite yet?
It turns out that the bio-batteries closest to reality at this time have a major problem with waste products. That waste is created as those particular batteries involve microbial yeast-based fuel cells that steal “some of the electrons produced when the yeast metabolizes glucose” in order to create a small current. While the entire process works just fine, the yeast cells are at risk unless the waste products are removed. We can’t exactly let the waste be dumped into the blood stream, so until there’s a some kind of cleaning process, the batteries are trouble as they either they die off or poison your bloodstream while trying to survive.
That trouble aside though, the research is quite encouraging and a huge first step. It may be many years until we can use bio-batteries, but I’ll wait patiently with some Häagen-Dazs until the day that fat bottomed girls really make the rockin’ world go ’round. [New Scientist]
As mentioned last week, Toshiba’s first batch of 3,000 direct-methanol fuel cell (DMFC) chargers—the first from a major manufacturer—hit Japan on Thursday. The IDG News Service has been testing one, and here are their first impressions:
Some quick background: DMFCs produce electricity from a reaction of methanol, water, and air—the only by products are a small amount of water vapor and carbon dioxide. You refill the fuel cell with a few squirts of methanol, and presto, you’re able to charge gadgets without a wall socket.
The idea has been in development for 10 years, and Toshiba says that they’re “seriously considering and researching the next model to [be available for the] worldwide market.”
IDGNS tested the new Dynario charger on gear like the PSP and iPod, and say it pretty much does its job flawlessly—though it won’t support every device you connect to its USB socket, including the iPhone. Toshiba has a list, and says about four out of five gadgets should work.
The ¥29,800 (roughly $325) charger is about the size of a PSP, and has a brushed metal finish. It has a small battery to “kick start” the power generation, which charges itself in operation.
50ml refill bottles/cartridges come in packs of 5 for ¥3150 (about $35), so clearly this isn’t cost-effective yet. IDGNS says each methanol bottle is good for about 3.5 refills, and each refill charges a cellphone twice.
And while the charger itself is cleared for airline travel, the methanol bottles aren’t. Toshiba hopes to sell them at airports for quick charges before or after flights. So travel aside, maybe the technology has more potential for emergency kits for use in blackouts and natural disasters? Time will tell. [PC World]
More: continued here
The Dynario fuel cell charger from Toshiba will launch in Japan on Oct 29, bringing with it direct methane fuel cell injection that lets you charge two cellphones simultaneously.
The first 3,000 run will cost 29800 Yen ($328), and you get five cartridges for 3150 Yen ($34), which makes it cost ineffective if you’re talking about practical charging. But if you really need power on the go and you don’t have time to charge up traditionally, this is the future—so long as you’re part of the first 3,000 that they’ll test this out on before going on a wider release. [Toshiba Japan via Engadget]
