Slashdot Mirror

More information http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_fuel_cell If you want to buy them now. http://www.fuelcellstore.com/ How Fuel cells work http://www.fuelcells.org/basics/types.html

Here is a quote from the EETimes article. "The resultant Bloom Boxes are not inexpensive today— about $750,000 for a unit capable of running a household (about four to six units are needed to run a typical data center). But within five to 10 years the company promises to reduce the price to as little as $3,000" These fuel cell are not being mass produced yet. Please read about fuel cells before making any judgments about the technology. http://www.fuelcelltoday.com/online/news http://www.fuelcells.org/news/updates.html There are many other companies working on similar fuell cells for homes and vehicles that have already been in use for several years.

They come up w/an impractical, overpriced & crude application of the work they put to better use in a testbed van.

Yep, somewhen in the middle 60's Ford made a experimental Econoline van that was powered by fuel cells.

Need some sleep? Try ,http://www.fuelcells.org/info/library/fchandbook. pdf

Taking a quick look at the list of available fueling stations, there seems to be a rather limited number of stations currently. The state I live in (CT) has only two available stations, both of which are primarily used for fueling public transportation. California on the other hand, does have a larger number, but again, in relationship to population density / size of the state, it is still a rather small number of stations.

Even if Ford or other domestic car company were to produce a reasonably priced economy hydrogen cell car, AND fueling stations become more common, what is the average price per gallon? All the emission reduction in the world isn't going to mean shit if it costs me $5 / gallon to fill up.

It's sheep like you that make life in corporate America such a wasteland.

"SHIT FUCKING JESUS GOD ARMAGEDDON!! Who fucking cares if Joseph Hazlewood scraped some reefs and made all the shoreline in Alaska gooey and black? Those wildlife advocates and the wildlife using the shoreline are pissy advocates and pissy users, respectively! Five billion dollars!? Sounds like overzealous lawyers once again! I've been driving for ten years, yesterday I made a wide left and accidently scraped the curb. Yeah I had a scotch and a brandy and some cognag to wash it down, who fucking CARES? Overzealous curb if you ask me!

Speaking of which, this has nothing to do with the satirical statement I just uttered, but last week I was horrifically scarred when the Firestone tires I had on my Ford Pinto reacted with the liquid hydrogen that some schmucky +1 underrated gas station genius spilled all over my cigarette lighter during my last car wash! How I made it out of that fireball alive beats me. I still believe it was my fault for not yielding right of way along I-80 when the Presidential Motorcade needed to suddenly swerve 90 degrees to the right for Secret Presidential Reason!

I'm damn proud to be a PATRIOT!"

Equipment wears out. But does it HAVE to wear out? Cars need constant refueling. But do they HAVE to? The power I need to run my computer and keep my food cold comes from nonrenewable energy sources - but does it (hyperlink to informative webpage on solar energy) HAVE (/hyperlink) to?

Fact is, these greedy corporations are making money off of schmucks like you, and as long as schmucks like you continue to side with them in their moments of inhuman, fat, bloated walrus-like greed, they'll continue to be greedy and fat walruses. Just because Johnny did all his homework last night doesn't give him the right to set fire to Granny's hair. Just because Ronald Reagan didn't lie about being an actor didn't justify his hostile takeover of the Air Traffic Controller's Union. Just because Osama Bin Laden didn't play any active part in the Holocaust doesn't give him the right to organize the September 11th attacks. And it doesn't mean that when Granny's bald and scarred and the Air Traffic Controllers are denied their right to strike and thousands of people lie dead and mangled that any of these things are okay, or justifiable.

I think Infinitys needs to do some reading on how fuelcells have been progressing. I highly suggest getting the newsletter at Fuel Cells 2000. Honda is really moving forward on getting a production version out on the road.

Still, I think they should size a few of the projects towards what people really use. SUV's and Truck sized vehicles is what I'm thinking. You see, they need to connect with the common person. The common person has to haul people and stuff around, not just a transportation for themselves. I think it would be huge step if they could get a full size truck version that would appeal to contractors and workers in the blue collar world. If they start using vehicles based on Fuel Cells, things will follow quite quickly afterwards.

You have absolutely no idea how a fuel cell works, do you?

Try reading here or here for starters.

Fuel cells are not gas cans, and you will certainly not be pouring gasoline into your laptop battery. Please, read before you post.

Picture of one for laptops
from
Fuelcell.org
you may now mod this as redundant.

Picture of one for laptops
from
Fuelcell.org
you may now mod this as redundant.

Sure, but what about heat?

Reading some information on various fuel cells, it mentions various types, the coolest being the Direct Methanol Fuel Cells (DMFC) which runs at about 120-190 degrees F (about 50-100 deg C) which would require their own heat problems, which are already a big deal with laptops. Aside from all the "what about on airplanes" questions, I'm wondering about how well the laptop will run at those temperatures. They'll have to swap out some components comming standard on laptops nowdays (s-video/etc) in exchange for fans.
If you want longer battery life, you can get more batteries, so the only real advantage I see is they're safer for the environment in the long run.

I'm thinking I'll wait until they become more widestream and they have some of those issues worked out before I jump on that wagon.

No They dont contain many moving parts if any, compressed air and fuel from the "tank" should produce enough power for a phone without any pumps or anything

http://www.fuelcells.org/

Good introduction.

Strangely enough, I do recall the proposal to use gasoline for fuel cells, say in cars, for pollution control, etc. The idea is that you need to have a cheap source of hydrogen and oxegen. And you do not what to use tap water because of the impurities. (never mind that producing a system that could handle impurities would cut the legs from under the Oil Companies)

Any number of complex hydrocarbons could be used as a fuel for such a system. Methane is just one.

And the one that some people like is to derive the hydrogen and carbon from ordinary gasoline. Although this is a wild mix of things, it has the advantadge of that it continues to feed the Oil Companies, and it takes advantadge of the distribution system already in place.

Technology is partly based on the profit center, after all.

Ironically, nuclear power represents a short-term solution to the greenhouse effect, by giving an immediately practical alternative to coal- and gas-fired generators.

Yes, although we still haven't figured out quite what to do with the waste of nuclear power generation. This makes it as unattractive than burning fossil fuels for energy. There is no one fix-all technology for these problems, but there are plenty of practical things we could decide to do as a society that make sense at many levels, including lessening the potential threats of global climate change (i.e. global-warming/cooling). I think by pursuing the Kyoto agreement (or some similar thing) would be a Good Thing (tm) to provide an incentive toward taking steps away from fossil fuels to a cleaner, healthier environment.

There is plenty of data by "real" scientists that global warming (better termed climate change, IMO) is occurring and it is tied to massive burning of fossil fuels by humans. And even if it won't lead to near-future (i.e. a few hundred years) catastrophe, we still have plenty of other incentives to wean ourselves from fossil fuels. Smog and air-quality are problems in many cities (ask a city-dweller with asthma). Energy efficiency is often better for the bottom line -- when a long term view (oh-so-rare in America) is taken (check out Natural Capitalism by ).

Personally, I think we should focus on natural gas in the short term (rather than more oil drilling and coal burning), start to develop fuel cells, and begin investing (seriously) in alternative energy source research and infrastructure. More wind power, decentralized power generation (via fuel cells), and non-fossil-based burnable fuels would be a great place to start.

None of this is pie-in-the-sky. Wind-farms are not uncommon in the US, and when planned properly are efficient and environmentally friendly. The oft-mocked call of "Liberals" for energy conservation deserves to be taken seriously -- it's good for us all and for the bottom line. Decentralized, cleaner sources of power could help to eliminate dependencies on large, monopolistic corporations for basics like power, and put decision making power closer to the grassroots.

Of course, with the current quarter-by-quarter mentality of shareholders that leads corporations to seek as much profit as soon as possible, leads corporate decisions makers to leave out the big picture and future consquences. This gets us super-marketed, inefficient, expensive Sport Utility Vehicles and advertising designed to reinforce the modern American impulse to consume-consume-consume at all costs. Combined with the incredible power and influence of Old Energy in DC and internationally (hell, we fight wars for them), old habits like burning fossil fuels will die hard. Very hard. The habits will die, or we will...

Emissions relocation is by and large a Good Thing. individual combustion engines get woefully low efficiency compared to power plants, often even after you've factored in power loss from transfer over lines and other factors. Localized emissions allow us to have a handful of areas under close watch for pollution, as opposed to several million miniscule points of exhaust spewing forth pollutants across an entire city. (Ever seen the Houston skyline? Neither has anybody else...)

But you do make a valid point--that the emissions aren't necessarily cut, just moved elsewhere. This is a problem with "charged" vehicles, whether that charge be electrical, air, or anything else. It is safe to say that a "charged" vehicle would probably result in better overall conditions than traditional combustion vehicles, but the pollusion will still exist at the plant (assuming combustion is used at the power plant.) Hydrogen fuel cells, OTOH, solve the problems of both the "charged" vehicles and the combustion vehicles, with a rather elegant middle step to ease the transition.

Instead of burning hydrocarbons like conventional engines and power plants, fuel cell vehicles convert hydrogen and oxygen (from the outside air) into energy and water. In a pure fuel cell vehicle, water is the only waste product generated. Thus, you have none of the issue of the redistribution of pollutants; you instead have an entirely new method for generating the energy in the first place.

Of course, a pure fuel cell car is a ways away, due largely to the fact that all the "good" (read: environmentally friendly) methods of generating hydrogen are either prohibitively expensive or still under development. (There's promising work being done with harvesting hydrogen from bule-green algae--watch for it.) The other big reason is that the fuel infrastructure for hydrogen-powered cars doesn't exist yet, whereas the infrastructure for gas is massive. Enter the fuel reformer. This puppy extracts hydrogen directly from a pretty wide variety of hydrocarbon fuels (ethanol, methanol, and many others) and generates miniscule amounts of pollutants compared to the monsters created in combustion. These units allow fuel cell cars to fill up with readily available fuel from virtually any service station, convert it into hydrogen, and run an amazingly green vehicle compared to today's standards.

Until we can harvest hydrogen efficiently in a direct manner (from water, algae, or any of a number of other methods,) the above option presents what I think is the most viable form of nextgen transportation available. There's no recharge period, it's efficient, produces comparatively miniscule amounts of far more benign waste products, and can fuel practically anywhere an existing car can fuel without any change whatsoever to the fuel infrastructure. The technology is already in commercial prototypes, and is being driven (no pun intended) by some pretty heavy names--Ballard, GM, Honda, just to name a few. There is Big Money behind fuel cell powered vehicles, and there are a number of companies preparing to unveil fuel cell powered passenger vehicles in the next two to five years. We're talking actual work being done now on the mass production of a number of different fuel cell passenger cars. As clever and cool as this air powered car is, it falls too far short of fuel cells. Why recharge your air tanks for 3 hours with a (probably noisy) compressor unit (and then for only 1 day's worth of driving) when you can fill your fuel cell car up in 1 minute at any gas station?

...though I must say that it kicks total ass that a French company came up with this. *grin*

Obligatory link to info: Fuelcells.org

Actually, a hydrogen-driven vehicle is far, far safer than a gasoline powered vehicle, according to the following information from Fuelcells.org:

With regards to the probability of a rupture of the hydrogen storage tank, Pg 30: "Each tank is tested at 1.5 times its rated operating pressure, and samples from each lot are pressure tested to failure. Each tank design must be qualified at 2.25 times normal operating pressure. Each class of tank is also subjected to gunfire and must not explode but leak only through the bullet-hole." (Try doing that to a gasoline tank!)

Pg xi: "In a collision in open spaces, a safety-engineered hydrogen FCV shound have less potential hazard than either a natural gas vehicle or a gasoline vehicle due to four factors. First, carbon fiber wrapped composite storage tanks (the leading high pressure storage tank material due to its low weight) are able to withstand greater impacts than the vehicle itself without rupture, thereby minimizing the risks of a large release of hydrogen as a result of a collision. Second, hydrogen, if released, disperses much faster than gasoline due to much greater buoyancy, reducing the risks of a post-collision fire. Third, the FCV will carry 60% less total energy than a gasoline or natural gas vehicle, resulting in less potential hazard should it ignite. Finally, the design recommended here includes an inertially activated switch in each FCV that, in the event of a collision, will simultaneously shut off the flow of hydrogen via a slenoid valve or valves, and will cut electrical power from the battery."

Pg. xii: "Hydrogen has 52 times greater buoyancy and 12.2 times greater diffusion coefficient than gasoline. Thys hydrogen will disperse much more quickly than gasoline or natural gas. Similarly, hydrogen's lower flammability limit is four times greater than that of gasoline.

...on a similar note, the Fuelcells.org site also goes into the possible causes of the Hindenberg accident. While it is still agreed that the hydrogen contributed to the overall conflagration once it was started, the current theory of choice on why the Hindenberg went up is that the hydrogen really didn't come into the picture. The cellulose acetate or cellulose nitrate gas bladders reacted with the aluminum flakes in the covering material used to keep the skin cool; unfortunately, cellulose nitrate and metal chips are the ingredients of rocket fuel. (Add that to your "Great Decisions In Aviation History" collection...)

This is what I heard too. Actually when I read it they said something to the effect of "If the government would put more money into research, fuel cell engines for cars could be produced within 3-5 years."

I just had to give a short speech for a speech class last week. I did it on fuel cells. There are a lot of interesting developments going on with that technology. Apparently the only commercially ready fuel cells are phosphoric acid fuel cells (originally developed by NASA about 30 years ago I believe). There are several other types that should be ready within the next 5 years though.

They're also coming up with some interesting ideas for fuel sources. Powerball Technologies had one of the more interesting ideas.

Here's a few more links to check out:

Fuel Cells 2000

Commercializing Fuel Cells

Fuel Cells - Green Power. This is a 36 page PDF file from Los Alamos National Lab

Here's a bunch more.

Go to http://www.fuelcells.org/ for more information.

Sundiata (wondering why his original post got moderated down...)