cavelamb writes:

This is a radical development of fuel cell technology ...

Right. The same idea that has been the next big thing for, what, 50 years
now? Suckers.

On Feb 24, 6:23*am, Richard J Kinch wrote:
cavelamb writes:
This is a radical development of fuel cell technology ...

Right. *The same idea that has been the next big thing for, what, 50 years
now? *Suckers.

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.energy.homepower/browse_thread/thread/f416e9a19888961b/91f7a10cda6cae4f#91f7a10cda6cae4f
Or alt.energy.homepower, "Bloom Energy"
Bruce in Alaska has proven himself well informed,experienced and
credible.

jsw

Richard J Kinch wrote:
cavelamb writes:

This is a radical development of fuel cell technology ...

Right. The same idea that has been the next big thing for, what, 50 years
now? Suckers.

Want to put money on that, Richard?

--

Richard Lamb
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~cavelamb/

cavelamb writes:

Want to put money on that, Richard?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...erence-update/

Ker Than for
National Geographic News
Published February 24, 2010

The Bloom Box-an as yet unbuilt in-home "power plant" designed to be
about the size of a mini-fridge-could provide cheap, environmentally
friendly electricity to U.S. households within ten years, according to
Bloom Energy. Or not.


After days of speculation and hype, the fuel cell company unveiled
their plans for Bloom Box mass production-but no prototype-at a press
conference today with California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and
former U.S. secretary of state and Bloom Energy board member Colin Powell,
among others.

But fuel cell experts say that, based on the information the company
made public today, the Bloom Box technology is not revolutionary, nor
is it the cheapest or most efficient fuel cell system available.

"It's a big hype. I'm actually pretty ****ed off about it, to be quite
honest," said Nigel Sammes, a ceramic engineer and fuel cell expert at
the Colorado School of Mines.

"It really is nothing new. Go to any [solid oxide fuel cell] Web site
and you'll see the same stuff."

Mike Brown, a vice president at fuel cell maker UTC Power-a competitor
to Bloom Energy-also wasn't surprised.

"I think we had anticipated just about everything that's on their Web
site," Brown said. "But it's nice to at least finally see something" after
ten years, which is about how long the Bloom Box has been in development.

In an interview with CBS TV's 60 Minutes Sunday night-which did much to
fuel anticipation for today's announcement-K.R. Sridhar, CEO of Bloom
Energy, said that, for one thing, the Bloom Box fuel cell system is a
much better, or at least more reliable, alternative to solar power as
a green energy source.

Video: Bloom Box Segment From 60 Minutes



"The sun doesn't shine on your rooftop 24 hours a day," Sridhar said. "Our
box produces electricity continually and reliably."

Fuel cells are devices that combine a fuel, such as natural gas, and an
oxidant, such as oxygen, and turn their chemical energy directly into
electrical energy.

Big Bloom Box Already in Use

For months now, Bloom Energy has been testing refrigerator-size Bloom
Boxes at campuses of major corporations-including Google, FedEx, Wal-Mart,
and eBay.

One of these jumbo Bloom Boxes, called Bloom Box Servers, could power
a hundred homes, and four of them could power a 35,000-square-foot
(3,250-square-meter) office building, Sridhar said on CBS.

Sridhar, a former NASA engineer, said he hopes to begin selling the
mini-fridge-size Bloom Boxes within five to ten years. Each of the small
Bloom Boxes should be able to power a household, he said.

How Bloom Box Should Work, Basically

At the heart of the Bloom Box will be solid oxide fuel cells-in this
case, flat, coaster-size ceramic plates with a secret coating-widely
considered by experts to be one of the most efficient types of fuel cells.

Bloom Box plates-already in use in the industrial models-can each power
one light bulb, but a stack of 64 of the cells could be "big enough to
power a Starbucks," Sridhar said.

Oxygen and natural gas would be fed into the Bloom Box and undergo
a high-temperature chemical reaction in the fuel cells to produce
electricity, heat, carbon dioxide, and water.

The fuel could be piped in from municipal natural gas systems-much as
it is for gas stoves and ovens-or created from biogas or, as in the case
of eBay, harvested from natural gas-rich landfills.

No Reason to Doubt Bloom Box Tech?

Friedrich "Fritz" Prinz, a fuel cell expert at Stanford University, said
there's no reason to doubt that the Bloom Box works as Bloom Energy's
Sridhar claims.

"The solid oxide fuel cell technology they're pursuing is one of the
most attractive fuel cell technologies there is," said Prinz, who was
not involved in the Bloom Box's development.

Based on the 60 Minutes segment, Prinz said, the design of the Bloom
Box appears to be fairly standard and that there was nothing obviously
revolutionary about it.

"They didn't reveal any new physics or any new principles, but I don't
think they need to do that," Prinz added.

"They just need to take understood and recognized principles in material
science and thermodynamics and implement them, and it looks like they've
done that successfully.

"Whether they've done it economically, I don't know."

Bloom Box for the Budget Conscious?

The industrial-strength Bloom Boxes now in use cost eBay and other
companies between U.S. $700,000 and $800,000. At eBay, Bloom Energy is
maintaining the machines under a ten-year maintenance contract.

eBay CEO John Donahoe told 60 Minutes that the five Bloom Boxes installed
seven months ago at the company's campus in San Jose, California, now
provide almost 15 percent of eBay's electricity needs. Estimated energy
savings for the seven months: $100,000.

At that rate, the Bloom Boxes should pay for themselves within three
years, Donahoe told the business-news site Fast Company.

A residential Bloom Box should cost around U.S. $3,000, Bloom Energy's
Sridhar said-much cheaper than most currently available consumer fuel
cell systems.

"Manufacturing these things cheaply is not easy," said Michael Kanellos,
editor-in-chief of Greentech Media, a business-news site specializing
in green technology coverage and analysis. "ClearEdge initially sold
theirs for $50,000, and they had to raise it to $56,000."

Those high prices are due in part to the fact that home fuel cell
systems have been built by hand and because low demand hasn't allowed
manufacturers to achieve economies of scale-for example to negotiate
cheaper prices for raw materials in the way that large production runs
allow-said Brown of UTC Power.

Previous systems have also used the precious metal platinum, though
Bloom Energy says they've found a way around this-though the details
are under wraps-according to Prinz, of Stanford University.

Bloom Box Safe and Solid?

It's also unclear how safe and durable the Bloom Box will be, said UTC
Power's Brown. Solid oxide fuel cells must operate at extremely high
temperatures, and as a result, they often crack or leak.

For the Bloom Box to become widely adopted by homeowners-who would
presumably be nervous about replacing old reliable technology with a new,
relatively untested one-the system will need an operational lifetime of
about 85,000 hours, or about ten years, Brown said.

There are commercial fuel cells, such as ones made by UTC Power, that
can operate continuously for that long, Brown said. Bloom Energy has
not disclosed the operational lifetime of its Bloom Box.

It's also unclear as of yet how energy efficient the Bloom Boxes are,
Brown said. Fuel cell systems in which both the generated electricity
and heat are used can be 90 percent or more energy efficient.

Bloom Energy has not released specific details about the Bloom Box's
energy efficiency or specified whether the heat produced by its units
can be utilized.

"We didn't see any evidence of thermal recovery, so we assume it's
an electricity-only device," Brown said. "If that's the case, it is
somewhere between 45 and 55 percent electrically efficient."

That would make the Bloom Box only about 5 to 10 percent more efficient
than conventional combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) power plants,
Brown said. Such plants create electricity in two phases: first via gas
turbines, then via steam turbines, which take advantage of excess heat
generated in the first phase.

Whitney Colella, a fuel cell researcher at Sandia National Laboratories,
said the Bloom Box appears to be very similar to fuel cell systems
developed by United Technologies Corp. (of which UTC Power is a unit)
and FuelCell Energy, Colella said.

"All of them can run on natural gas, and all of them can run on biogas,"
she said. "The main difference is that the electrical efficiency [of the
Bloom Box] is slightly higher" than the other two, at least according
to figures posted online by Bloom Energy today.

Bloom Energy's Killer App?

While most experts seem to agree that the current Bloom Box appears to
be a fairly standard solid oxide fuel cell system, Bloom Energy has
filed patents in recent years that hint at a possible killer feature
that could set its future devices apart from the competition, Greentech
Media's Kanellos said.

The patents describe a process for taking the runoff of the main
electricity generation-carbon dioxide and water-and using it to produce
oxygen and a "methane-like fuel," he said.

This would essentially reverse the chemical reaction in the Bloom Box-a
possibility Sridhar hinted at on 60 Minutes.

That new fuel and oxidant could be automatically run through the Bloom
Box to generate even more electricity-and less waste.

The big Bloom Energy Servers already in use don't currently do this,
but if such a reverse-reaction is possible-and it's not clear that it
is-then "it would be huge," Kanellos said.

"If they can do that, they're in a class by themselves," he said. "If
they can't do that, then they just have a really nice fuel cell ... but
it may not be so tremendously [different] to set them apart."

Ed Huntress writes:

Well, *that* would make it interesting.

Yes, it would.

The problem is, these prospects always reduce to an essential pitch of,
"These devices will be cheap/durable/safe/efficient as soon as we solve one
last problem of getting water to run uphill."

Call it engineering quackery.

On Feb 24, 8:26*pm, Richard J Kinch wrote:
...
The problem is, these prospects always reduce to an essential pitch of,
"These devices will be cheap/durable/safe/efficient as soon as we solve one
last problem of getting water to run uphill."

Call it engineering quackery.

Been THERE before.

Why can't a company like that start up here and hire me as their
electronic, mechanical, battery and chemical technician?

jsw

"Richard J Kinch" wrote in message
. ..
Ed Huntress writes:

Well, *that* would make it interesting.

Yes, it would.

The problem is, these prospects always reduce to an essential pitch of,
"These devices will be cheap/durable/safe/efficient as soon as we solve
one
last problem of getting water to run uphill."

Call it engineering quackery.

Right. Now that you're expressing skepticism, I don't feel so lonely. g

I remember reading detailed descriptions of solid-oxide fuel cells long ago.
A utility company here in NJ had several of them in use a couple of decades
ago. They were cubes that even looked like the Bloom Box. They had already
solved the "poisoning" problems that came from using standard natural gas.

I'm curious about how they intend to dissociate CO2, if that's in fact what
they're big secret is all about. My limited understanding is that it's a big
loser in terms of energy conversion.

--
Ed Huntress

"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Richard J Kinch" wrote
Call it engineering quackery.

Right. Now that you're expressing skepticism, I don't feel so lonely. g

I remember reading detailed descriptions of solid-oxide fuel cells long ago.
A utility company here in NJ had several of them in use a couple of decades
ago. They were cubes that even looked like the Bloom Box. They had already
solved the "poisoning" problems that came from using standard natural gas.

Heck, I was going to buy one of the GE units (hot water and electricity
from propane or natural gas, and quiet) when they came out in 2 years
(1998). Funny, in 2000, it was 3 years away. The price point was
supposed to be $15K for an 8KW unit. I finally got done dropping $20K+
on a regular old power line, since they were bogus, microturbines were
not bogus but way too pricey ($30-100K) and solar is a crappy option in
this area that ends up expensive (if you actually want to run machines)
because of that. Listening to an internal combustion generator got old,
and was very expensive.

Last time (a few years ago, and a looong time after 2000) I bothered to
follow up (GE/PlugPower) "actuals" one could infer from the numbers in
the annual report that they had a price around $100K and a lifetime of
about a year. Not that they were revealing these figures directly, mind
you. GE may no longer be associated with them, but as far as I recall it
was GE to start with, then perhaps plugpower was split off and the two
were joined at the hip, but there seems to be an item about them parting
ways a few years back. I really haven't cared much or followed it
closely once it became clear that they were pushing vaporware, as most
in this field do.

Unless and until you can walk into the store and buy one off the shelf,
don't believe anything but that the company (any company claiming they
have the next big thing in solar, fuel cell, etc.) is looking to fleece
(yet more) investors out of (yet more) money. That's the _only_ reason
for any press release that doesn't say, e.g., "Buy one for $2000 at Home
Depot this week!"

--
Cats, coffee, chocolate...vices to live by