9 ms·

Bloom Box Fuel Cell Device is Revealed

46 points by alexandros 17y ago

david927 17y ago
I'm really excited about this. But it won't be actually 'revealed' until Wednesday.
bmunro 17y ago
The box also produces carbon dioxide as a byproduct--a potential downside depending on how much it generates. The amount it generates is of little concern - what matters is where the methane (or other fuel) comes from. If the methane is produced from fresh biomass then the box is carbon neutral. But if the fuel comes from oil then it won't be carbon neutral.
- pmjordan 17y ago
  Also, how much CO2 it generates depends only on the amount and type of fuel it consumes[1] - e.g. 1 CO2 molecule emitted per CH4 molecule consumed - so that statement is nonsensical to begin with. [1] unless it also produces carbon monoxide, which is unlikely considering the efficiency claims. Other than H2O, I'm not aware of any other possible byproducts of methane oxidisation.
  - CapitalistCartr 17y ago
    The amount of CO2 per unit of electricity produced is more the question. That would be a key element of its overall efficiency, although given its claimed efficiency, that number should be pretty good.
  - IgorPartola 17y ago
    >> Other than H2O, I'm not aware of any other possible byproducts of methane oxidisation. The same was said for the ICE, and now our cars emit all sorts of crud. Ideally, that's all you get: CH4 + O2 ---> 2H20 + CO2. Practically, you get sulfur and other impurities. Specifically sulfur scrubbers (http://www.duke-energy.com/environment/air-quality/sulfur-dioxide-scrubbers.asp http://www.duke-energy.com/environment/air-quality/sulfur-di...) are often used to reduce the amount of sulfur, but they raise the amount of CO2 byproduct. It's a no-win situation.
    - pmjordan 17y ago
      The sulfur is an impurity of the fuel, though, it's not produced out of thin air. How the engine deals with impurities will depend on the exact chemical reactions, but you're not going to get more CO2 molecules out than carbon atoms go in.
      - IgorPartola 17y ago
        Of course. But my point is that cleaning fuel is an energy intensive task. Moreover, in the past it has resulted in additional CO2 being output.
- Sukotto 17y ago
  It looks like all the major Natural Gas exploration/development companies in the US are planning to drill like crazy in 2010/2011 which will likely drop the price of NG off a cliff. So, fuel for this thing will be cheap in the near future (cheap for NG-fuel power plants too). Not carbon-neutral though for those who are sensitive to environmental costs. For that, you'd have to set one up near a bio-methane plant or methane-capture facility. But really... there's no way a bunch of these things are going to pollute anything near what an equivalent coal-fired plant does. So adopting them would be a net win environmentalwise.
- gfodor 17y ago
  Yeah I'm very interested in what the path to carbon neutrality is. I'm sure they've thought this through, obviously. Cow dung is probably not the end-game :)
- mbrubeck 17y ago
  According to another story, eBay fuels their Bloom units with methane from "landfill waste": http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1141568 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1141568
- easp 17y ago
  Which is a gross oversimplification since we know that biomass production is often anything but carbon neutral. Were petrochemical fetilizers involved? Did they clear land to produce it? How much oil was used to transport it? If it came from a landfill, was anything done to hasten decomposition, if so, it may be releasing CO2 that would otherwise have been locked up for much longer. I appreciate the idea of getting maximum use from things that have already been produced, but I'm pretty down on scaling biofuels up. I think there are better uses of land and freshwater. In practice, photosynthesis just isn't that efficient, and then the plant takes a big cut for its own growth and maintainence. Finally, there generally multiple inneficient steps for transformation into useful work. It is dismal compared to solar + battery + electric motor.
- frankus 17y ago
  Where it gets interesting is in colder climates where the waste heat could be used for space heat and domestic hot water production, a.k.a. "combined heat and power".
scotty79 17y ago
Is that more effective than burning natural gas in turbine? EDIT: In the movie there is a statement that it is twice as effective. Another question: How much a natural gas turbine of the same output costs?
dbz 17y ago
How long is the predicted life on these big boxes though? The thirty years quote was abut how long a fuel cell should last. How long do these ones last though? Well. It can't be worse than coal.
- khafra 17y ago
  It does seem rather unexciting, given that "ebay has saved $100,000" over 9 months with 5 boxes, and the boxes cost $800,000 apiece--that's a 30 year payback.
  - sethg 17y ago
    How long does it take to pay back the construction of a conventional power plant?
  - weaksauce 17y ago
    It's a 15 year payback for ebay. The units were 50% off after subsidies.
pi3832 17y ago
I think the fact that you'd need a natural gas pipeline, or a propane tank out back, kind of negates the "disconnected from the grid" thingy. Also, where does one get the energy to heat the magic box to 1800 F?
- cracki 17y ago
  from the box itself, i'd guess... electric heating elements?
  - pedalpete 17y ago
    electric heating elements to get 1800F? Wouldn't that take more power than this thing would create? I missed the part about heating to 1800.
    - ncarlson 17y ago
      The chemical reaction heats up the box. However, large amounts of insulation is needed to retain the heat.
motters 17y ago
I had to stop watching the video half way though, because I was laughing so hard. To me this looks like a definite energy generation hoax, of which there have been many in the past. A wafer of sand (silicon) painted green is not going to produce much (if any) electricity. Suspend your suspension of disbelief and engage physics 101.
- danparsonson 17y ago
  I guess the boxes that eBay and Google are using have hamsters inside them instead?
  - motters 17y ago
    The people at Google are no doubt hotshot software engineers, but how many of them are physicists/chemists I wonder. Has there been an independent scientific confirmation that the underlying mechanism of electricity generation is valid, and produces significant net energy gain? I very much doubt that. Do we have anyone here on HN who can actually confirm that these devices have been installed at Google? I've taken an interest in various energy generation ideas over the years, and a fair amount of hoaxing has always gone on. Sometimes the hoaxes are quite sophisticated an investors who like what they see but know little about physics end up being defrauded out of large amounts of money. From what I've seen in this article/video this raises all the classic red flags which you could expect from a hoax operation.
    - deleted 17y ago
      [deleted]
    - gfodor 17y ago
      Yes, the classic energy hoax of "marginal improvement over a well known and understood chemical process that obeys the laws of thermodynamics." I have a feeling you missed the part where they put hydrocarbons in one end.
      - motters 17y ago
philf 17y ago
"we can use fossil fuels, or renewable from land fills..." "solar?" "we can use solar". Sounds pretty much like a hoax.
- conover 17y ago
  I was watching the interview on 60 minutes and it seems like they edited out something that was said about "solar". As if he probably qualified that answer but the producers decided that it wasn't really relevant.
- sethg 17y ago
  If you use a solar energy to turn carbon dioxide and water into methane, bottle the methane, and later run the methane through this fuel cell to generate electricity, how much energy is lost in the round trip? (Compared with just using solar energy to make the electricity directly.)
mseebach 17y ago
Bloom estimates that a box filled with 64 ceramic disks can produce enough juice to power a Starbucks. So, how many Starbucks to a Library of Congress? How about not estimating and giving us some useful metrics, preferable based on this newfangled "watt" unit?
- ableal 17y ago
  I figure about 30kW per box. Elsewhere in the article, they say Ebay got 100k USD of electric power from using 5 boxes for 9 months. Assuming 10c/kW.h, that's 1 MW.h in 6408 hours, coming out to about 154 kW for all five boxes. Adjust for actual utility rates and exact usage.
  - nazgulnarsil 17y ago
    yeah, but such hyperbole is a classic sign of a con. if they were serious they'd just tell you the I/O.
    - krakensden 17y ago
      On the other hand, the source is a 60 minutes puff piece- their audience has no conception of what a watt is.
      - anamax 17y ago
        Their audience knows what a hair dryer (1500-1800 watts) and a 100 watt light bulb are. 30kw - can run 300 100 watt light bulbs continuously. They could even throw in a refrigerator or two.
        pedalpete 17y ago
        Actually, they did mention how one 'disc' or wafer powers one lightbulb. The problem with comparing a lightbulb or refrigerator, etc. is that the average person has to think... ok, so how many discs are in a box? how many lighbulbs do I have in my house? etc. In the piece (which I admit is very fluff), the founder shows a box and says 'this is a european house', grabs another box and says 'this is an american house, or 4 asian houses'. These are methods of explanation that the 60 minutes audience can understand. The actual company is apparently launching on Wednesday, so I'd expect that on that day we'll hear more details. Seeing as the device can use a different gases as fuel, wouldn't we expect that the output would be dependent on the fuel supplied?
eserorg 17y ago
This is essentially a solid-state microturbine. You can order a 65-kW microturbine from Capstone Turbine Corp for about $40,000 USD. Natgas-powered microturbines have commonly been used for distributed power generation in industrial settings (hotels, hospitals, etc...) See Ingersoll Rand: http://www.ingersollrandproducts.com/IS/Category.aspx-am_en-18218 http://www.ingersollrandproducts.com/IS/Category.aspx-am_en-... See Captsone Turbine Corp: http://www.microturbine.com/prodsol/solutions/chp.asp http://www.microturbine.com/prodsol/solutions/chp.asp Try Googling for "microturbine". [edit] Also, "Microturbines: Applications for Distributed Energy Systems" is a good book on the subject. Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Microturbines-Applications-Distributed-Energy-Systems/dp/0750684690 http://www.amazon.com/Microturbines-Applications-Distributed...
- frankus 17y ago
  This might eventually scale down better than a microturbine (65kW is enough electricity for a large neighborhood (on average), and enough heat for a handful of homes), and I would bet it also operates better at part load. Microturbines aren't especially quiet either, but it's hard to know how much noise this thing makes without more information.
- scotty79 17y ago
  There is a claim in the movie that Bloom box uses half of the natural gas that would be required to produce same amount of energy in the power plant. If that's true (even if it includes price of energy delivery and income of energy producers) it's really going to be revolution in energy production. Especially considering how much energy is currently produced from natural gas.

46 points by alexandros 17y ago

I'm really excited about this. But it won't be actually 'revealed' until Wednesday.

The box also produces carbon dioxide as a byproduct--a potential downside depending on how much it generates. The amount it generates is of little concern - what matters is where the methane (or other fuel) comes from. If the methane is produced from fresh biomass then the box is carbon neutral. But if the fuel comes from oil then it won't be carbon neutral.

pmjordan 17y ago
Also, how much CO2 it generates depends only on the amount and type of fuel it consumes[1] - e.g. 1 CO2 molecule emitted per CH4 molecule consumed - so that statement is nonsensical to begin with. [1] unless it also produces carbon monoxide, which is unlikely considering the efficiency claims. Other than H2O, I'm not aware of any other possible byproducts of methane oxidisation.
- CapitalistCartr 17y ago
  The amount of CO2 per unit of electricity produced is more the question. That would be a key element of its overall efficiency, although given its claimed efficiency, that number should be pretty good.
- IgorPartola 17y ago
  >> Other than H2O, I'm not aware of any other possible byproducts of methane oxidisation. The same was said for the ICE, and now our cars emit all sorts of crud. Ideally, that's all you get: CH4 + O2 ---> 2H20 + CO2. Practically, you get sulfur and other impurities. Specifically sulfur scrubbers (http://www.duke-energy.com/environment/air-quality/sulfur-dioxide-scrubbers.asp http://www.duke-energy.com/environment/air-quality/sulfur-di...) are often used to reduce the amount of sulfur, but they raise the amount of CO2 byproduct. It's a no-win situation.
  - pmjordan 17y ago
    The sulfur is an impurity of the fuel, though, it's not produced out of thin air. How the engine deals with impurities will depend on the exact chemical reactions, but you're not going to get more CO2 molecules out than carbon atoms go in.
    - IgorPartola 17y ago
      Of course. But my point is that cleaning fuel is an energy intensive task. Moreover, in the past it has resulted in additional CO2 being output.
Sukotto 17y ago
It looks like all the major Natural Gas exploration/development companies in the US are planning to drill like crazy in 2010/2011 which will likely drop the price of NG off a cliff. So, fuel for this thing will be cheap in the near future (cheap for NG-fuel power plants too). Not carbon-neutral though for those who are sensitive to environmental costs. For that, you'd have to set one up near a bio-methane plant or methane-capture facility. But really... there's no way a bunch of these things are going to pollute anything near what an equivalent coal-fired plant does. So adopting them would be a net win environmentalwise.
gfodor 17y ago
Yeah I'm very interested in what the path to carbon neutrality is. I'm sure they've thought this through, obviously. Cow dung is probably not the end-game :)
mbrubeck 17y ago
According to another story, eBay fuels their Bloom units with methane from "landfill waste": http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1141568 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1141568
easp 17y ago
Which is a gross oversimplification since we know that biomass production is often anything but carbon neutral. Were petrochemical fetilizers involved? Did they clear land to produce it? How much oil was used to transport it? If it came from a landfill, was anything done to hasten decomposition, if so, it may be releasing CO2 that would otherwise have been locked up for much longer. I appreciate the idea of getting maximum use from things that have already been produced, but I'm pretty down on scaling biofuels up. I think there are better uses of land and freshwater. In practice, photosynthesis just isn't that efficient, and then the plant takes a big cut for its own growth and maintainence. Finally, there generally multiple inneficient steps for transformation into useful work. It is dismal compared to solar + battery + electric motor.
frankus 17y ago
Where it gets interesting is in colder climates where the waste heat could be used for space heat and domestic hot water production, a.k.a. "combined heat and power".

scotty79 17y ago

Is that more effective than burning natural gas in turbine? EDIT: In the movie there is a statement that it is twice as effective. Another question: How much a natural gas turbine of the same output costs?

dbz 17y ago

How long is the predicted life on these big boxes though? The thirty years quote was abut how long a fuel cell should last. How long do these ones last though? Well. It can't be worse than coal.

khafra 17y ago
It does seem rather unexciting, given that "ebay has saved $100,000" over 9 months with 5 boxes, and the boxes cost $800,000 apiece--that's a 30 year payback.
- sethg 17y ago
  How long does it take to pay back the construction of a conventional power plant?
- weaksauce 17y ago
  It's a 15 year payback for ebay. The units were 50% off after subsidies.

pi3832 17y ago

I think the fact that you'd need a natural gas pipeline, or a propane tank out back, kind of negates the "disconnected from the grid" thingy. Also, where does one get the energy to heat the magic box to 1800 F?

cracki 17y ago
from the box itself, i'd guess... electric heating elements?
- pedalpete 17y ago
  electric heating elements to get 1800F? Wouldn't that take more power than this thing would create? I missed the part about heating to 1800.
  - ncarlson 17y ago
    The chemical reaction heats up the box. However, large amounts of insulation is needed to retain the heat.

motters 17y ago

I had to stop watching the video half way though, because I was laughing so hard. To me this looks like a definite energy generation hoax, of which there have been many in the past. A wafer of sand (silicon) painted green is not going to produce much (if any) electricity. Suspend your suspension of disbelief and engage physics 101.

danparsonson 17y ago
I guess the boxes that eBay and Google are using have hamsters inside them instead?
- motters 17y ago
  The people at Google are no doubt hotshot software engineers, but how many of them are physicists/chemists I wonder. Has there been an independent scientific confirmation that the underlying mechanism of electricity generation is valid, and produces significant net energy gain? I very much doubt that. Do we have anyone here on HN who can actually confirm that these devices have been installed at Google? I've taken an interest in various energy generation ideas over the years, and a fair amount of hoaxing has always gone on. Sometimes the hoaxes are quite sophisticated an investors who like what they see but know little about physics end up being defrauded out of large amounts of money. From what I've seen in this article/video this raises all the classic red flags which you could expect from a hoax operation.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - gfodor 17y ago
    Yes, the classic energy hoax of "marginal improvement over a well known and understood chemical process that obeys the laws of thermodynamics." I have a feeling you missed the part where they put hydrocarbons in one end.
    - motters 17y ago

philf 17y ago

"we can use fossil fuels, or renewable from land fills..." "solar?" "we can use solar". Sounds pretty much like a hoax.

conover 17y ago
I was watching the interview on 60 minutes and it seems like they edited out something that was said about "solar". As if he probably qualified that answer but the producers decided that it wasn't really relevant.
sethg 17y ago
If you use a solar energy to turn carbon dioxide and water into methane, bottle the methane, and later run the methane through this fuel cell to generate electricity, how much energy is lost in the round trip? (Compared with just using solar energy to make the electricity directly.)

mseebach 17y ago

Bloom estimates that a box filled with 64 ceramic disks can produce enough juice to power a Starbucks. So, how many Starbucks to a Library of Congress? How about not estimating and giving us some useful metrics, preferable based on this newfangled "watt" unit?

ableal 17y ago
I figure about 30kW per box. Elsewhere in the article, they say Ebay got 100k USD of electric power from using 5 boxes for 9 months. Assuming 10c/kW.h, that's 1 MW.h in 6408 hours, coming out to about 154 kW for all five boxes. Adjust for actual utility rates and exact usage.
- nazgulnarsil 17y ago
  yeah, but such hyperbole is a classic sign of a con. if they were serious they'd just tell you the I/O.
  - krakensden 17y ago
    On the other hand, the source is a 60 minutes puff piece- their audience has no conception of what a watt is.
    - anamax 17y ago
      Their audience knows what a hair dryer (1500-1800 watts) and a 100 watt light bulb are. 30kw - can run 300 100 watt light bulbs continuously. They could even throw in a refrigerator or two.
      - pedalpete 17y ago
        Actually, they did mention how one 'disc' or wafer powers one lightbulb. The problem with comparing a lightbulb or refrigerator, etc. is that the average person has to think... ok, so how many discs are in a box? how many lighbulbs do I have in my house? etc. In the piece (which I admit is very fluff), the founder shows a box and says 'this is a european house', grabs another box and says 'this is an american house, or 4 asian houses'. These are methods of explanation that the 60 minutes audience can understand. The actual company is apparently launching on Wednesday, so I'd expect that on that day we'll hear more details. Seeing as the device can use a different gases as fuel, wouldn't we expect that the output would be dependent on the fuel supplied?

eserorg 17y ago

This is essentially a solid-state microturbine. You can order a 65-kW microturbine from Capstone Turbine Corp for about $40,000 USD. Natgas-powered microturbines have commonly been used for distributed power generation in industrial settings (hotels, hospitals, etc...) See Ingersoll Rand: http://www.ingersollrandproducts.com/IS/Category.aspx-am_en-18218 http://www.ingersollrandproducts.com/IS/Category.aspx-am_en-... See Captsone Turbine Corp: http://www.microturbine.com/prodsol/solutions/chp.asp http://www.microturbine.com/prodsol/solutions/chp.asp Try Googling for "microturbine". [edit] Also, "Microturbines: Applications for Distributed Energy Systems" is a good book on the subject. Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Microturbines-Applications-Distributed-Energy-Systems/dp/0750684690 http://www.amazon.com/Microturbines-Applications-Distributed...

frankus 17y ago
This might eventually scale down better than a microturbine (65kW is enough electricity for a large neighborhood (on average), and enough heat for a handful of homes), and I would bet it also operates better at part load. Microturbines aren't especially quiet either, but it's hard to know how much noise this thing makes without more information.
scotty79 17y ago
There is a claim in the movie that Bloom box uses half of the natural gas that would be required to produce same amount of energy in the power plant. If that's true (even if it includes price of energy delivery and income of energy producers) it's really going to be revolution in energy production. Especially considering how much energy is currently produced from natural gas.