Bloom Fuel Cells

[Structo]

Anybody else catch the news story last night about the company Bloom and the new fuel cells they are developing?

They consist of these wafers made from silica (sand) that produce electricity.

The CEO held up a stack of these wafers that was about the size of two bricks and said that it was capable of supplying electricity for the average sized home.

They are already using large units to power commercial buildings.

Those units cost over $700K!

I don't recall if he said what a home sized unit will cost but it sounds like a pretty cool technology.

I just wonder if big oil or other world powers are going to allow this thing to substitute being on the grid and produce their own juice?
One issue I see is that this will generate DC current.
So what energy will be used to convert it to AC?

Stories:
http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/news/2258476/eba ... bloom-fuel

http://www.pcworld.com/article/190203/1 ... rver.html/

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 1C6M96.DTL

[img:625:483]http://imgs.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2010/ ... 067071.jpg[/img]

[fperron_kt88]

Fuel cells are ubercool for fixed applications.

One drawback and a few observations:

This specific model emits CO2. No biggy if it runs on locally supplied gas, but you want to get an eye on this in your comparison model over other solutions. That's one drawback.

Some numbers are out of wack: 100kW for 100 american houses? Nope, sorry. Nothing said about efficiency either (one article on the standard claims "2-to-1 efficiency advantage over electric utilities")... Let's see how this gets hashed in the days to come...

But I want one anyway!

[Andy Le Blanc]

I would like to have wonderful happy thought about this.
But it still uses a fossil fuel, and I share the same fears of industry on large
squashing the technology. One thing I did read following up for info after
the report was that this product is successful enough that his clients were
more responsible for pushing him into making a public disclosure than the company.

[Structo]

Yeah, I didn't really understand the part about the fuel.

I could have sworn on the news story last night they said all it took to run was clean water, but I may have missed something since I was in and out the room and haven't really researched it that much.

Remember quite a few years back they said they would build small cold fusion reactors and every home would have one in 10 years, or some such thing.

Really all they need to do is make a perpetual motion machine and everybody would be happy!

Reminds me of an old car I used to have.
That thing got such good mileage that when I got home I would have to syphon gasoline out of the tank because it would overflow!

Another thing that may get into the global warming/ green thing controversy, is in my state I believe they have allocated a few million dollars to build recharging stations for electric cars.
Trouble is, there are no consumer electric cars yet......

[FYL]

Anybody else catch the news story last night about the company Bloom and the new fuel cells they are developing?

Old story, Bloom has been "communicating" and raising funds for the last 5 years or so. Their technology looks great for low cost applications of fuel cells but as of today all we've got is PR-speak, Powerpoint presentations, shrimps in tangy dressing and celeb endorsements.

Could be another Segway in the making: overhyped & underperforming.

One issue I see is that this will generate DC current.

The current unit generates up to 100 kW of 480V 3-phase 60 Hz AC with a > 50% efficiency for a cool 700K$ initial outlay and unknown running costs. Not bad, but far from revolutionary.

[Jana]

"Really all they need to do is make a perpetual motion machine and everybody would be happy!"

The credit card companies perfected that years ago!