Consumer Hydrogen Fuel Cells

axis-techno-geek writes: "Ballard Power Systems of Vancouver, BC (in Canada, eh), has stated that it will start production this friday of their consumer level Nexa(tm) hydrogen fuel cell (article here). The power module generates up to 1200 watts of unregulated DC electrical power that can keep going as long as it is supplied with hydrogen, and produces no toxic by-products (i.e. you can use it in your home). They also have plans for a 250kW unit. No price as of yet."

Comments

Hydrogen and fuel concerns.

[Christopher Thomas]

No matter how meaningful quantities hydrogen are generated, greenheads will hate the fact that mother earth will incur vast amounts of greenhouse gases. Shall we address the infrastructure problems associated with hydrogen? The costs of retooling fuel distribution channels to handle hydrogen?

The advantage to switching to hydrogen or another easily-synthesized fuel like methanol is that it centralizes the power generation, allowing you to switch to a different system (solar, nuclear, hamster wheels, or what-have-you) without requiring another upgrade to all of the cars and service stations on a continent. This is a very respectable accomplishment.

You can also generally install better scrubbers on a coal power plant than on a car, even before you start switching to alternate power sources.

Another issue conveniently ignored is the storage of hydrogen. Hydrogen, in its current form, is not particularly dense, requiring large tanks to store the equivalent energy stored in fossil fuels.

That's why I like the idea of using methanol as a fuel. You could handle it in existing service stations without too much refitting, and you could burn it in a conventional internal combustion engine (though you'd probably want a ceramic engine to avoid corrosion over time). Fuel cells can process it too, though with greater difficulty. Methanol's boiling point is low enough that you'd have to store it under pressure, like propane, but this isn't too difficult (we already have the infrastructure for it for propane).

Methanol can be produced by fermenting plants if you're desperate, or produced by direct synthesis if you have a source of power, hydrogen, and CO2 handy. Plunk a fuel plant next to a big city, and you have all three (water, exhaust, and the local power plant).

This gives us the advantages of a hydrocarbon fuel without having to short-circuit the carbon cycle or depend on exhaustible fossil fuel deposits.

Of course, we'll only really switch when fossil fuels become scarce enough to make this cost-effective.

Re:Drinkable? (tangent)

[ryanvm]

I'm wondering, is the efflux drinkable? [...] Obviously if you have pure hydrogen and clean air going into a fuel cell, you could possably get pure H2O out.

I'm not sure whether or not a hydrogen fuel cell will produce pure H2O, but I do know that you wouldn't want to drink it.

Although it isn't unhealthy, distilled water (pure H2O) tastes like shit. Your body is actually accustomed to the various minerals and whatnot that you'll find in most drinking water.

Try a glass of it the next time you fill up your car's radiator - the distilled water, not the coolant!