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Methanol fuel cells are very inefficient at 30%. It is still better than internal combustion engine, but with H2 one gets over 70%. Still I agree that for niche

Methanol fuel cells are very inefficient at 30%. It is still better than internal combustion engine, but with H2 one gets over 70%. Still I agree that for niche applications like electrical cars in a very cold climate methanol fuel cells should be way more practical then hydrogen.

ChuckMcM 6y ago
Bloom Energy's fuel cells are 53%+ efficient[1] on natural gas (Methane). Methane is easily liquified and transported and the infrastructure that supports this is widely deployed today. [1] https://www.bloomenergy.com/datasheets/energy-server-es5-250kw https://www.bloomenergy.com/datasheets/energy-server-es5-250...
- neltnerb 6y ago
  Yeah, I've been keeping an eye on Bloom since they were still in stealth. It's neat and I believe their technology. It seems to me like their fuel cell is designed to be a replacement for natural gas power plants and that it would better complement renewables than traditional fossil fuel use because it's probably extremely fast to respond to being turned up and down so it can follow unpredictable supplies. That's great! Though to be fair, a combined cycle natural gas plant is also likely a lot more efficient than you are thinking, they're more like 50-60% than 30%. The gains may be very marginal... so maybe more for home use where if the electricity goes out maybe you still have gas (though in such an emergency I imagine you'd be more concerned with reliability than efficiency). I can't really imagine these being used in cars, LNG does have infrastructure as you point out but if you think it's widespread I have to wonder where you live. In my life I've only ever seen LNG pumps in California and New Zealand. I think it heavily depends on what the country has kind of settled on as a standard fuel... but batteries are also 90% efficient at storing and releasing energy in temperate climates and I know solid oxide fuel cells tend to need to be super hot to get reasonable ionic conductivity don't they? But also on the point of grid use, I should point out that the big difference between these fuel cells and a battery storage system is that these fuel cells as best I can see don't work in reverse. So you can't like take extra solar electricity and just run it backwards to make natural gas like you'd store power in a battery. So I guess... within the error bars of the efficiency of a combined cycle natural gas plant and it can't store power? I hope it's cheap.
  - ChuckMcM 6y ago
    I designed an urban data center with them which was pretty cool. (fun fact, a lot of metro areas have way more gas capacity than they need, as opposed to electrical grid capacity) The bonus factor was not needing diesel generators onsite for backup power just keep a natural gas reservoir from the local supply. We had some of these at Google powering the lab in one of the buildings with some standard Google type equipment racks. Easy start, rapid response, and N+1 or N+2 or 3 redundancy without needing a whole additional plant. (four of their 250kW units could cooperate to generate 1MW of power, and a fifth 250kW unit could provide surge and allowed for you to take a unit offline for maintenance without losing power.
    - neltnerb 6y ago
      That is very cool. I am surprised the cost came in under diesel generators, was it for noise/space/pollution more than cost? If they're legitimately cheaper for the same kW's as a diesel generator that's a different picture. I still probably wouldn't use one as a portable generator but I'd definitely consider it as power backing for a hospital in a dense area where a big enough generator wasn't feasible (if it were in fact smaller). Edit: I'm going to assume that if you pay for it you can get the kind of redundancy and automatic switching controls too with a diesel generator, I'm not actually positive they exist but I'd figure they would for the right price.
      - ChuckMcM 6y ago
        First, disclaimer, this was a while ago so the current data may be different (better or worse) but at the time, if you did the total cost of ownership thing, they were on a par with buying your power from natural gas 'peaker' plant and that was cheaper than a diesel generator. The diesel generator requires more maintenance than the Bloom boxes did. There are also the switchover circuity and battery bank that was required to hold up the data center between grid power loss and diesel startup. You can kill a modern data center by having a second power event before the standby batteries have enough charge to support another switch over. (which is why at least one company's data center stays on diesel until the batteries are recharged even if grid power returns).

ChuckMcM 6y ago

Bloom Energy's fuel cells are 53%+ efficient[1] on natural gas (Methane). Methane is easily liquified and transported and the infrastructure that supports this is widely deployed today. [1] https://www.bloomenergy.com/datasheets/energy-server-es5-250kw https://www.bloomenergy.com/datasheets/energy-server-es5-250...

neltnerb 6y ago
Yeah, I've been keeping an eye on Bloom since they were still in stealth. It's neat and I believe their technology. It seems to me like their fuel cell is designed to be a replacement for natural gas power plants and that it would better complement renewables than traditional fossil fuel use because it's probably extremely fast to respond to being turned up and down so it can follow unpredictable supplies. That's great! Though to be fair, a combined cycle natural gas plant is also likely a lot more efficient than you are thinking, they're more like 50-60% than 30%. The gains may be very marginal... so maybe more for home use where if the electricity goes out maybe you still have gas (though in such an emergency I imagine you'd be more concerned with reliability than efficiency). I can't really imagine these being used in cars, LNG does have infrastructure as you point out but if you think it's widespread I have to wonder where you live. In my life I've only ever seen LNG pumps in California and New Zealand. I think it heavily depends on what the country has kind of settled on as a standard fuel... but batteries are also 90% efficient at storing and releasing energy in temperate climates and I know solid oxide fuel cells tend to need to be super hot to get reasonable ionic conductivity don't they? But also on the point of grid use, I should point out that the big difference between these fuel cells and a battery storage system is that these fuel cells as best I can see don't work in reverse. So you can't like take extra solar electricity and just run it backwards to make natural gas like you'd store power in a battery. So I guess... within the error bars of the efficiency of a combined cycle natural gas plant and it can't store power? I hope it's cheap.
- ChuckMcM 6y ago
  I designed an urban data center with them which was pretty cool. (fun fact, a lot of metro areas have way more gas capacity than they need, as opposed to electrical grid capacity) The bonus factor was not needing diesel generators onsite for backup power just keep a natural gas reservoir from the local supply. We had some of these at Google powering the lab in one of the buildings with some standard Google type equipment racks. Easy start, rapid response, and N+1 or N+2 or 3 redundancy without needing a whole additional plant. (four of their 250kW units could cooperate to generate 1MW of power, and a fifth 250kW unit could provide surge and allowed for you to take a unit offline for maintenance without losing power.
  - neltnerb 6y ago
    That is very cool. I am surprised the cost came in under diesel generators, was it for noise/space/pollution more than cost? If they're legitimately cheaper for the same kW's as a diesel generator that's a different picture. I still probably wouldn't use one as a portable generator but I'd definitely consider it as power backing for a hospital in a dense area where a big enough generator wasn't feasible (if it were in fact smaller). Edit: I'm going to assume that if you pay for it you can get the kind of redundancy and automatic switching controls too with a diesel generator, I'm not actually positive they exist but I'd figure they would for the right price.
    - ChuckMcM 6y ago
      First, disclaimer, this was a while ago so the current data may be different (better or worse) but at the time, if you did the total cost of ownership thing, they were on a par with buying your power from natural gas 'peaker' plant and that was cheaper than a diesel generator. The diesel generator requires more maintenance than the Bloom boxes did. There are also the switchover circuity and battery bank that was required to hold up the data center between grid power loss and diesel startup. You can kill a modern data center by having a second power event before the standby batteries have enough charge to support another switch over. (which is why at least one company's data center stays on diesel until the batteries are recharged even if grid power returns).