T&L Publications

First, hats off.

There were rumours and some publications about it 10? years ago. They have been working on it. Good. Now the polishing part.

This opens doors also for an electric car refuelable in very short times with liquified gas. Yes, gas means gas, not gasoline.

Next come the chinese to copy it.

Hope price comes to a very competitive level to get rid of speculators on arab juice.

Miguel

The Chinese are very good at copying construction but still thankfully not all that good at copying material science. Let's just hope Bloom has a good firewall to keep the spies out.

Even if it is ready for prime time now, there will be close to a decade to adopt it because it will take that long to proove (and improve) the reliability for the price you pay. This technology and others like it certainly can make a difference but its still not a silver bullet. it could just make other sources of fuel (NG in particualr) more expensive.

Here is more news from this morning, with diagrams of the workings of, and list of fuels for, the Bloom device:

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_14461347

More "power" to them if they work as proclaimed.
But, it wouldn't be the first snake-oil energy solution to hit the news.

If it is not snake oil, then it could revolutionize the way we use energy. It is supposedly way more efficient than the internal combustion engine, the Carnot cycle in particular. We could have electric cars without batteries, but using the Bloom device to change regular hydrocarbon fuel energy into electicity.

I don't think this one is snake oil. Samples are being used and monitored at plausible scientific corporate users. Wow, think of the advancement in medicine and technology in the last century when the public was still using horses for transportation, horse dung smelling up the streets, and nobody had electricity or telephones.

sofaspud,

I found the blog post you linked to interesting. I have similar concerns.

While I think it would be pretty nice to bring on-demand power generation closer to where it is needed, until such generators approach the efficiency of those used in utilities' power plants burning the same fuel, such devices are mere science experiments.

I'd like to see more effort put into making purchase and installation of PV, Wind and Hydro power dirt cheap and easy. I'm looking forward to the day we can walk into Home Depot or WalMart and buy product that make us less-dependent upon people that send us utility bills every month. If only eBay and Google can afford a particular technology, it's useless to me.

More than years ago I started seeing this type of fuel cell hype show up on the web. Supposedly you would be able to get a fuel cell that ran off natural gas or propane. An inverter powered by this DC fuel cell would sit just ouside your house or maybe even in your basement. It would make very little noise (bubbling sound) and would spit out pure water and tie into your electrical system. There would be minor exhaust gases as well. No more grid for you. The device to run a residential home would be no bigger than let's say a central air conditioner or heat pump that you find outside many homes.

Here are some examples:
http://www.acumentrics.com/products-fue ... energy.htm

http://www.toshiba.co.jp/csr/en/highlig ... elcell.htm

http://www.poweronline.com/product.mvc/ ... TCOOKIE=NO

My personal take on these is they have their purpose; as backup generators and for those too far from the grid. Can they eventually be made such that you could cheaply go off grid? Maybe.

An average home uses between 1000kW/h to 1500kW/h per month. You must be able to generate more than this power to compensate for power conversion and peak usage as to not overload the system. If you can make the price and life expectancy of one of these to be that of a home furnace you might convince me. Considering I saw web sites saying these were only "five years away" more than a decade ago, I don't expect I'll be going to Home Depot and seeing them on the sales floor any time soon.

For those that have knowledge about these, how often to the membranes need to be replaced? I know they can be contaminated but I see most of these advertised as needing little maintenance.

Why is it I can't buy one of these cells?
Miles and miles of spin and hype but you can't buy one for independent testing.
Guess you'll just have to take their word for it.

You probably could with enough money and a waiting list. Up until now they have only solicited investors who were simultaniously installation sites. YOu probably would have had to be invited to buy one since few knew what they were making until just recently. These things are probably hard enough to make that they have a home for every one they build thus eliminating any availability for independant testing. Its just premature to expect independent analysis of their claims, besides the claims were realistic (as opposed to some of the speculation in the media)

Yes, they are for sale. Affordable and not. Toy size and not. Cheap and not.

http://www.itechnews.net/tag/fuel-cell/

http://www.inhabitat.com/2010/03/19/oor ... our-house/