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Fuel-Cell Backup Power Under Your Desk
An Anonymous Coward writes "Just up this evening on the Coleman Powermate web site: This is the first
commercial fuel cell product that I am aware of. Who wants one under their Christmas tree?" I just wish the fuel wasn't quite so expensive.
POWER=1000 Watts (Batteries Charged)
RUN TIME @ 50% LOAD=6 Hours
For the price, looks like it could be worth it.....
How do they store the hydrogen? It wasn't apparent from the page... the biggest hurdles in using hydrogen as a power source isn't the fuel cell but the storage of hydrogen. You need to keep it cold & pressurized if you want it in a liquid state, and gaseous state would require way too much space.
its eeyes security software that runs with IIs
www.eeye.com
You mean it uses hydrazine, or what? :-)
at $7,500 for the "Starter Pack", $10K for 24 hours. A generic (Honda, or something) gasoline generator is only a hundred bucks or so, and gasoline is only about $1.25/gal here in the US now. Who does Coleman think might buy this stuff? Osama bin f-ing Ladin? (Just the thing to keep your satellite phone lit in the caves on those long winter nights in Nowhere, Afghanistan?) It's amazing that they'd even advertise this product at the prices they're quoting. Until they meet reality, they'll never sell these things.
Fuel Cell Generator
Creates computer-safe electricity from hydrogen and oxygen
Uninteruptible Power Supply
Seemless power transition keeps systems running smoothly
Surge Protector and Power Conditioner
Protects sensitive electronics from high voltage jolts and sags
MODEL NO. PMXXXXX
POWER 1000 Watts (Batteries Charged)
OVERLOAD CAPACITY 1600 VA for 2 Seconds
VOLTS 120 VAC +/-3%
FREQUENCY 60 Hertz
WAVEFORM Perfect Sine-Wave
NOISE 65 dba @ 1 Meter
FUEL CELL Ballard Nexa
FUEL 3 Hydrogen Fuel Canisters
RUN TIME @ 50% LOAD 6 Hours
SURGE PROTECTION 360 Joules
BATTERIES Sealed Lead Acid
WEIGHT (LESS CANISTERS) 101 lbs.
DIMENSIONS 27.3" x 15.8" x 19"
WARRANTY 1 Year
Really cool, but the fuel cells are expensive for only 6 hours of back up time @ 50%. I wonder what the unit itself will set you back.
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
It seems not to have a serial or ethernet port.
If you are not having it under your desk but in machine room like they show on one of the pics, you will never know if it's actually in good health.
Also I did not see an indication that it could tell a computer to shutdown before it runs out of fuel.
George
Atari rules... ermm... ruled.
from article: Indoor Use No deadly carbon monoxide emissions -- phew!
"Everything we say and do is right." -a mooninite
According to the website, it is $7495.99 for the generator and three fuel bottles. For the generator and nine bottles, the price jumps to $9995.99. Doing some basic math, the cost of a fuel comes out to about $416.66 per bottle, unless I am missing something major. Also, it claims the nine-bottle pack is a 24-hour supply. If you live on a non-Bill Gates budget, nobody can afford spending $3750 a day on fuel.
Granted, this baby can supply a constant kilowatt of power. But doing the math, you are paying $156.25 per kilowatt-hour. This has to be the most ludicrisly expensive method of power generation I know. You may as well hire 10,000 hampsters to run on a wheel to supply your backup power. I'm sure they can generate just as much power, not to mention the only fuel required is cheap dried food and water. But you do have to clean up all those hampster pellets...
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
FUEL 3 Hydrogen Fuel Canisters
if you see the shape of the canisters and
know what kind of canisters it takes to store H2,
I doubt it's H2.
Very good piece of technology. Could be a bit better: being able to swap hydrogen canisters on the fly to give unlimited life; or being able to plumb in a hydrogen supply. This gives the possibility of using solar power during the day the power a computer and generate hydrogen, and to run of the hydrogen at night in a closed cycle. This would be better than lead acid batteries as these do not have a particularly high power density.
The cost of the hydrogen is outrageous - you can buy a J cylinder (big) of hydrogen for about $100.
Despite what the article says there is no way that this is the first commercial fuel cell - see this page for a manufacturer near you - but it is a great indication that they will soon be mainstream.
...I dunno... if it's not safe to store gasoline cans or propane cylinders in my house, why would it be safe to store hydrogen in my house?
Under "safety" they don't really seem to address this issue except to say that "hydrogen is supplied through safe, low-pressure canisters."
And why does the unit have "sealed lead acid batteries" in it?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
This technology if amazing and I am certainly that most of us will have something like this in the folloing 5-10 years. But it is very expensive now, and as someone here pointed out it can be replaced by a common no break for a fraction of the price.
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
You could hire someone to pedal a bike to generate electricity for less!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_c
Why just hydrogen? Propane/butane or methane would be much better due to their availability. You can get butane almost everywhere. Propane is well known and there is plenty of tank technology for it and methane is for many people, now on tap, being the main component of natural gas.
See my journal, I write things there
As a UPS, this thing could probably be matched (6hr/500w) by a few more lead/acid batteries under your desk. The cool thing is that you can buy these now just like any other (very expensive) generator. Coleman has invested the capital to make clean power available, and I for one hope they find a way to make it extremely profitable. (and somewhat more affordable)
The prohibitive cost of the generater itself - $6245.00 without fuel - and the cost of fuel will deter most people from owning one. What about the cost to clean one up? I know the Coleman advert doesn't really discuss it, but what if the (flammable / volatile) hydrogen is no longer safely contained in the 'low-pressure' containers? Filling a room with hydrogen is roughly the equivalent of filling the room with oxygen - it will combust (see references to the Hindenburg). While all this fuel-cell development is great for the environment / atmosphere / economy, I am not sure the consumer-level products are ready for distro... Interesting aside: on the Coleman webpage, you can (almost) order refills of the canisters - there is no price, no weight, and no canister dimensions...
Aspects of this page indicate it's not yet released. For instance, lots of stuff is XX'd out; and if you click on "Fuel Cells" in the nav bar, you get a notice implying that the product is not yet ready.
Is it possible that this is not the final pricing? It could be an early number, could be the very top (so nobody claims "false advertising" if they stumble across it later, when they set the real price), could be misinformation for competitors, whatever.
Oh, nobody's mentioned numbers yet, but to get a single data point, you can get an APC's Matrix 3000XR (which sustains 500kW for about 5:15, and is in many ways more capable-- higher peak, for instance-- but obviously-- can't be refueled during a power outage). It's listed at $3750 US.
Just because you buy a car from a manufacturer owned by Exxon doesn't mean you'd have to buy your gas there. Same with this. You could manufacture your own fuel for this baby with some simple electrolysis.
many of you are complaining of the cost of a fuel canister (~415$ per). what you have to realize is that consumer demand for hydrogen fuel is very _LOW_. that most likely means consumer supply is very _HIGH_. high school economics class tells us that the cost is also going to be very _HIGH_ as a result. when demand becomes _HIGH_, the price becomes _LOW_. hydrogen will probably never become as cheap as propane (2-3$/quart, ~10$ gal), but in the future, your 1Kw generator's fuel costs will decline sharply. there's always a price for being an early adopter.
moox. for a new generation.
what they DON'T tell you is it probably takes 10kwh of good ol' off the grid polluting fossile fuel energy back at the factory to make 1 Kwh of nice clean green marketroid sucker bait fuel for the wealthy tree hugging crowd. The most effecient (and hence less polluting) energy is the most direct - the more steps involved the more loss there is during the conversion. Untill they can drill for or dig up plentiful supplies of hydrogen in the first place your just using even *more* oil/coal/gas/plutonium to create the illusion of enviro-friendly power. (not to mention lining the pockets of the illusionists).
I mirrored the page on GeoCities
So much for copyright...
Laugh, it's funny.
Mmmmmmm. Floor pie!
Hydrogen, being the lightest element, doesn't go liquid until close to absolute zero at standard pressure. Even if you make the pressure dangerously high, the refrigeration will still keep it from being worth it to force it into the liquid state. An oxygen molecule is 16 times the size, but it still takes some work to make liquid oxygen, and the pressure would once again be dangerous.
How do they not take up too much space, as you said? Fuel cells are extremely efficient because rather than producing pneumatic energy from combustion which is then converted to electrical energy, they essentially make a battery out of them that fuses hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity. But they still don't usually store hydrogen or oxygen.
Fuel cells usually have a liquid forms - these are produced by dissolving or chemically combining hydrogen with less electropositive and negative elements (making an acid and a base), and then removing the hydrogen from this right before it is needed. Typically, the hydrogen is removed from an alcohol. Oxygen is just taken straight out of the air.
Here is a good summary of fuel cells, if you want to know more.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Do I read this right? 65dB sounds pretty horrendous to me. Surely fuel cells aren't supposed to sound that bad?
For this price, buy a lot of car batteries and a transformer. Charge it up, ensure it's topped up, and it'll go much cheaper without any CO poisioning or danger of blowing up and taking your office block with you. It's certainly kinder to the environment, and if you want to be extra good, get a green tariff from your electricity suppliers. Which you should have done anyway if you're going to get this picky over how clean it is.
Nice to see fuel cells turning up, but I honestly don't believe theat this is actually a commercial application of them. Overpriced and underspecced. Apart from the amount of power it supplies. But you could daisychain UPSes for half the price.
Widget
'Houston we have a problem'. Just kidding, but that problem was caused by a fuel cell burning H & O2 together. We generated the gasses by electrolysis back in chemistry classes long before Apollo 13 and setoff nice little burps in the class by introducing flame to canisters holding the hydrogen gas just to watch water vapor form on the sides. And to make a nice little bang that stirred things up in the halls.
What a gas... put a tow sled on Ginger, use it to carry the fuel cell and go coast to coast without stopping except for burgers at Checkers [Gotta eat] and potty breaks [Gotta poo after the burgers]... who'll be the first?
Everyone seems to be assuming that the because the price per cannister works out high the fuel is really expensive. I would have thought they would have a similar system to calor gas (bottles propane/butane) where the cannister is more expensive than the fuel _but_ is reusable, so if you want 9 you pay a lot (for the 9 bottles) after that the fuel is cheap.
I guess we'll wait and see.
It's the tanks to hold the high pressure hydrogen while being safe enough to be kept indoors that are expensive. The hydrogen is cheap...
This isn't bad for something that can be used indoors. It's also especially good for extreme environments where it's too cold outside for a gas powered generator to start in the winter.
"Perfect signwave electricity to protect sensitive electronics"
This must be so that deaf people can use the electricity, too.
forth ?love if honk then
It takes a fair bit of time for a fuel cell to start making power after you start the fuel feed. The batteries are there to a) allow the unit time to come up and b) to allow the unit to respond to surges like your monitor coming up.
www.eFax.com are spammers
If you really wanna know, their advice (from this fascinating page is:
Anyone remember the Bloom County strip in which the black genius kid asks his parents to ``Move away from the basement'' while he tests his nuclear experiment? When asked ``How far?'', he suggests New Jersey.
I refuse to believe corporations are people until Texas executes one. -- desert rain on http://www.dailykos.com/user/
Funny you should say that. I can imagine a similar conversation just twelve years ago.
Inventory clearance, Area 53, 1989
CLERK #1 (C1): Carbon composite toilet seats, 200?
CLERK #2(C@): Ship to Lockheed.
C1: Titanium hammers with gold anodized grips?
C2: Ship to General Dynamics.
C1: Portable fuel cells, 50, with starter pack, 500?
C2: Ship to OBL via Donkey Tain.
C1: What the fuck?
C2: Who cares, here are the lables.
Sold!
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
asshole.
GE has been selling their fuel cell systems for over a year. Sizes from whole house residential systems to commercial building-sized units.
They use propane (or natural gas?) and extract the hydrogen from there. Still have the problem of storage, but at least propane/natural gas storage is common and suppliers abound.
-a.e.mossberg
A quick pop over to APC shows that a Smart-UPS 1000 XL + (1)UXBP24 Battery Unit will have similar performance and only cost $1,600. Can you say, "Not ready for prime time."?
Of course, this thing is expensive, seemingly inefficient, and probably impractical... for now. But keep in mind a few things:
First of all, Ballard (the company that makes the fuel cell in this thing) has said all along that they're going to have the really practical consumer devices in the market in 2005 (I think it's in their annual report, if memory serves). I think anything you see out there earlier is going to be a test product to smooth out the edges in production.
The infrastructure to support hydrogen fuel (the price of those canisters, for example) is one of the things that needs to be smoothed out as well. The price of fuel should come WAY down with centralized production.
Ballard fuel cells can also run on other fuels (methanol, for one) but at a reduced efficiency and with a slight hydrocarbon emission (still something on the order of 3-5% of what comes out of a combustion engine, but enough that you couldn't run one in a closed room).
Yes, hydrogen fuel takes energy to produce, but so does fossil fuel extraction and then once you've got, say, gasoline, it gets burned inefficiently and with lotsa nasty waste products. I know cars seem to be getting more efficient all the time, but every car I know of requires a separate system to keep the engine cool (read: waste heat) and I wouldn't put my lips on a tailpipe. Fuel cells do their thing at 75-80 degrees F, and when hydrogen-fueled, the only output is distilled H20. That's it.
Once practical devices come to market , they'll have the potential of decentralizing power, with that huge advantage of EFFICIENCY. And aside from the abovementioned advantages, don't forget to factor in power loss from transmission through wires. A world where fuel cells are practical everyday devices is nothing less than a PC revolution for power: power plants for all! Think an power Gnutella as opposed to the power grid. After all, I'm sure some folks were saying "Two thousand dollars for 64K of RAM? These things'll never catch on" twenty years ago...
"Luck is the residue of design" --Branch Rickey
i did some research years ago about fuel cells. the viable solution is to buy the fuel cell generator that provides 200kwatts from UTC Fuel Cells.
this is actually a cool device that allows source from methane or natural gas.
they also have numerous installations made.
although at this time, i am not sure if there are other companies that have created generators made from fuel cells.
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
No and I don't mean oil companies trying to make their last bit of profit. Everything happens in the world because of the American market. The whole of pathetic Europe isn't going to make fuel cells popular. It's going to take the American consumer and a combination of need and a reasonable price before these are viable. They still just cost to much and frankly seem to be ready yet.
Nice firewall error when you go to there site now.
SecureIIS application firewall security alert
HTTP Request caused a security alert, please contact our web master if you are getting this alert in error.
---
What is SecureIIS
SecureIIS offers websites running Microsoft Internet Information Server a broad range of protection from common vulnerabilities, both known and unknown. Because SecureIIS does not protect against specific vulnerabilities, but classes of vulnerabilities, it allows for a much more far reaching layer of security.
Is it possible that if HTTP_REFER == "www.slashdot.org" then they classify that as a "potential security risk"? This is Microsoft software after all
If God gave us curiosity
I know people who work for the company that leads Fuel Cell research (Avista Labs), and I've heard them say that the technology is not yet feasable for normal use. Sure, they've come a long way over the past few years, but the units are simply too expensive to be worth trying to market.
-- this
Sure I have more holiday lights up than the Johnsons, but do you really think my Christmas tree needs to withstand a power outage too?
Thank you for your interest in Coleman Powermate's new fuel cell generator. You are getting error messages because the pages that you are trying to view are restricted and currently offlimits. The fuel cell pages have been removed from the server.
Please keep in mind that this is copyrighted material. Any retransmission of the material without the written consent of Coleman Powermate is strictly prohibited.
Please contact me if you have any questions.
Jon Hoch - HochJ@email.sunbeam.com
Why must response be a "We'll sue you!!"
-- I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken
New MS security measures include blocking any access to its servers by any computer that may have ever come into contact with Linux.
...and it's called limited production.
./ poster? Close, but no cigar.
abio, vaio picture book, honda NSX, and so many other products.
Companies understand simple macro economics...
The average
Your average consumer? Completely ignorant.
It's too bad that it can't use AC to refuel itself
by cracking H2O back into hydrogen to refill its fuel tanks when the AC is on. Now this would be cool.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
I'd like to see a little more intelligent discussion of pricing (yeah I know, this is slashdot...)
This product occupies a strange space, somewhere between a temporary generator and a high-end UPS. I checked the Coleman site for pricing on real generators, and (as consistent with my experience elsewhere) the pricing was "call us".
Any ideas on the real pricing of generator systems?
I'm not worried about personel cost to maintain (though I'm sure that's a real cost) but just the generator itself and the related infrastructure (venting etc.) as well as the related regulatory information.
A lot of people ask me about setting up backup power; I've talked to enough folks to get a good idea of what's at stake, but I'd love to hear more.From what little I can see, this fuel cell might actually be a viable option for many of those folks.
Looks like they didn't want all that known yet. :)
Anyone mirror the site.
Mike
I didn't use the preview button, so get over it!!!!
Mike
The URL posted above isn't correct. Try, http://www.colemanpowermate.com/fuelcell/
BTW, this site doesn't support Netscape. They don't know how to close off tables. Why is it that more then 40% of the websites I have gone to recently do that ?
until (succeed) try { again(); }
GE is not selling the home unit - they're just talking about it.
The GE unit is made by Plug Power and has been on GE's web site for close to a year now. Evidently, they've hit some snags. The fact Plug Power recently laid off almost 1/4 of their work force and their press releases talk more about financial than technology milestones doesn't bode well.
Ballard builds big systems. Their shipped product is a 250KW unit the size of a standard truck/ship container. They've been talking about a 1KW unit for a while, but their site still doesn't have photos of it.
Ballard was supposed to be the hot company in fuel cells, but they've been at Real Soon Now for a few years, and it's not clear what's wrong.
A fuel processor is needed to strip the hydrogen from propane or natural gas. These fuel processors are expensive and take additional floor space.
Propane and natural gas are much more functional solution for a data center fuel cells, where they can be located in a fixed place and make use of city natural gas lines or large propane storage tanks.
This particular fuel cell seems to target a different market. The under desk, or portable power generation market probably can't have the space or weight required to include a fuel processor and additional BBQ stryle propane tank.
Our science teacher showed us how explosive Hydrogen was while we watched the instant replay footage of the Challenger blowing up. Something like, "and kids, that had billions times more hydrogen than what you just saw."
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
SecureIIS application firewall security alert
HTTP Request caused a security alert, please contact our web master if you are getting this alert in error.
What is SecureIIS SecureIIS offers websites running Microsoft Internet Information Server a broad range of protection from common vulnerabilities, both known and unknown. Because SecureIIS does not protect against specific vulnerabilities, but classes of vulnerabilities, it allows for a much more far reaching layer of security.
eEye? Digital Security - Vulnerability Is Over...
I could be wrong, but the last time I researched fuel cells, I got the impression that a properly designed cell could ingest propane, methane, etc. directly. No extra stuff required. It would produce some more nasty byproducts than a straight up hydrogen/oxygen cell. However, I think there was a bonus that you usually didn't have to humidify the input gas when you used something like methane.
(IIRC humidification was one of those things that became pretty important when you started getting out of the pure research grade fuel cell sizes and into something that could be useful. I.e. something that runs hot.)
Been a while since I looked at that stuff. Could be way wrong.
"There's no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and keep turning left." -- Bill Vukovich
Try running an internal combustion generator in an enclosed space with you in it. They'll most likely be planting you in the ground when they find you later. Try doing that with this and you'll be around to tell the tale because it does specifically have no emissions other than water.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Here's the spec sheet from Ballard of the Nexa module used in the coleman. Some interesting differences:
1200 W, not 1000W.
Lifetime: 1500 Hours (~2 months)
Control interface: RS485
Output: 46 Amps @ 26 volts
Unit must be protected from weather, sand, dust, marine, and freezing conditions in product packaging (I assume coleman does this to some extent)
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
That run off of LP or Natural Gas. They're a little largish, but produce something like 10kW of electricity and enough waste heat to act as a pre-heater for your hot water system. They've been selling them for people over on the West coast for past couple of years. Now the GE system's unique in that it's designed to run off of Methane and thereby allowing you to use biomass sources to power the unit instead of LPG/NG- which would be a pretty "green" system indeed.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Looks as though the site was not meant to go live so soon. I think we caught a slip up on the coleman site.
> Have you actually tried that? I think you'd be in for a rude shock. Power quality will almost
> certainly cost you a lot more then the 10K that the fuel cell would set you back.
You can (and people actually do) use the crappy AC output from these generators to power sensitive equipment. You simply need the right power-conditioning equipment between the generator and your delicate load.
Since utility AC is not so great either, a good set-up will need such equipment *anyway*, so you really do get the output of the generator for the cost of the generator alone - the power conditioning cost is already sunk.
Your friend failed because he used a UPS which was not designed for this kind of power conditioning role. The right kind of UPS will work fine with a crappy Honda generator.
You can buy integrated backup systems, from companies like APC, which include a generator. There is nothing magical about the kind of generator they use - it *too* produces crappy AC. But that AC is then rectified to DC, which is then stabilized by a lead-acid battery, which is then inverted to clean AC - or some similar scheme.
If you know what you are doing, you can build equivalent systems yourself, using standard, cheap generators from the hardware store...
-- Mike Greaves
This will go as long as you've got fuel and will work under conditions (like sub-zero temperatures) that would mess up the ordinary UPS.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
You get this if you're coming in from thier site as well...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
...to burn up.
It was the waterproofing compound,
which was what we today call rocket fuel, albeit
rather unrefined.
Wow... good to know that eEye is protecting innocent IIS users from the horrors of the Slashdot Effect!! ;-)
o/~ Join us now and share the software
I checked the Coleman site for pricing on real generators, and (as consistent with my experience elsewhere) the pricing was "call us".
"Call us" generally means "If you have to ask, you can't afford it; it's not priced for residential use." It lets sellers put people on the line who are experienced in dealing with the effects of sticker shock. Once, I was looking into a library to develop installable filesystems for Windows NT/2K/XP to see if I could port ext2fs, but Microsoft's poorly documented headers cost $1,000, and the only other available package cost $100,000. Ouch.
Will I retire or break 10K?
This is the first time that I can recall the slashdot effect triggering a security response.
The only way fuel cells will work on a large scale is if we have many more nuke plants to generate hydrogen when as well as electricity (ie. at night, when demand is low, crank out more H). More nukes means more electric cars, more hydrogen for fuel cells, less polution.. Generating H with solar may sound like a good (PC) idea, but but the output would be laughable and what happens at night or when it rains?
Coast to Coast?
Do you live on Hawaii, or Puerto Rico?
The risk can be minimized by using valve-regulated absorbant-mat or gelled-cell batteries. They're still lead-acid, but they contain the electrolyte in either a mat or gel matrix which eliminates the spill hazard of sulfuric acid. The valve regulated feature allows the gases produced during charging to recombine instead of escaping if properly charged, via a valve-relief system.
Keep in mind, any unit with a battery in it (including the Airgen), will vent hydrogen if overcharged - that's why you spend the money to get a good charger/regulator. A car alternator or el-cheapo car-battery charger are NOT good chargers (no intelligence), and either depend on a known load, or a timed charge. You want something that monitors amperage, temprature, and voltage, and knows the profile of the batteries you're trying to charge. Good chargers are not cheap, but well worth the cost in maintaining battery life, without having to resort to "boiling" your batteries from time to time to get full charge.
Also, you might either want ventilation, or an outside installation for the units, if you really fear hydrogen that much...
Regarding the environmental hazard, lead is the most recycled material (90-99%?), and batteries are not dumped, but chopped up and recycled into new lead-acid batteries. Any place that sells lead-acid batteries here in the US is required to accept them for recycling. Compare this to all the NiCad batteries (Cadmium is quite toxic) produced for consumer devices that people end up tossing directly into the garbage.
The only other, low-cost high-capacity mass-market batteries, other than lead-acid, would NiFe, and good luck finding a supplier for those in small amounts.
I know... Let's just take some AA batteries, and hook them up to some electrodes in water. That'll disassociate the hydrogen and oxygen. Then we can give those to the fuel generator, and presto! Instant energy! (After all, AA batteries are MUCH LESS EXPENSIVE than those canisters are.) Why stop there? We can just hook up the output of the fuel cell to the electrodes and remove the battery! ("Lisa, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!")
So, seriously, using methane to drive a fuel cell isn't easy. You have to have some way to strip off the hydrogen, and also have to keep the system very clean. Turns out water does this nicely(!), but the the cell is somewhat soluble in water, so you eventually destroy the cell. Catch-22. Then there's warm up time, etc.
I imagine in this system, you can probably purchase a massive hydrogen cylinder from your local chemistry supply company, and refill the little baby cylinders from it. Then you refill the big one... then the company comes and refills the big one from the giant one... then refills the giant one by using electricity from the power company to disassociate water... who generates the power by burning coal! Until the methane problem gets worked out (or some other chemical supply), fuel cells will be an (expensive and inefficient) convenience for end users who just need an energy source that lasts longer than a LI battery.
-me
This is no doubt based around the Ballard Fuelcells. Since a few months ago they did release their NEXA power module. For more information www.ballard.com
Yes, but it DOES remove oxygen from the air. If I am not mistaken, we do STILL need that infernal substance to breathe....
AAAAA! Goddamn you!
Geoshitties pulled your page and replaced it with their 404 page. On this page is a movie ad with a fat guy with his pants down.
Goatse.cx-ers should be proud.
Heh - I reported the SecureIIS error to webmaster@
/. effect taking it's toll? :)
a nimation.shtml
and received this interesting little reply:
From: "Hoch, Jon"
To: Brian Coyle ,
webmaster@colemanpowermate.com
Subject: RE: SecureIIS error - fuel cell animation
Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2001 10:52:25 -0600
Thank you for your interest in Coleman
Powermate's new fuel cell generator.
You are getting error messages because the
pages that you are trying to view
are restricted and currently offlimits. The
fuel cell pages have been
removed from the server.
Please keep in mind that this is copyrighted
material. Any retransmission
of the material without the written consent of Coleman Powermate is strictly
prohibited.
Please contact me if you have any questions.
Jon Hoch
-----Original Message-----
From: Brian Coyle [mailto:brianc@magicnet.net]
Sent: Sunday, December 09, 2001 10:01 AM
To: webmaster@colemanpowermate.com
Subject: SecureIIS error - fuel cell animation
Heh-
Clicking on 'fuel cell aninimation' in the
lefthand nav bar results in:
http://www.colemanpowermate.com/fuelcell/fuelcell
SecureIIS application firewall security alert
HTTP Request caused a security alert, please contact our web master if you are getting this alert in error.
Attempts to hit the pages now request a UID & password...
SIGLOST && SIGUNUSED && SIGQUIT
PEM's run on H2 + O2. Um. Ballard Power (the OEM of the fuel cell) only makes PEMs. PEMs have no undesirable waste products.... when run on H2. When run (with a reformer) off of CH4 (methane) it releases CO2 -> bad. Unless you are a plant somewhere global warming hasn't hit yet. Like mars.
My neighbors sometimes tell me that the grid is down, but otherwise I'd never know.
Yes, it may take a little more energy on some of these paths, but sacrificing a little efficiency is WORTH it if you are also causing a net reduction in CO2 emissions.
Yes, New feature in IIS 'protection from malitious Distributed Denial of Service attacks' Also know as the 'slashdot effect.' IIS because you don't want people to access your site... If you did you'd run apache.
I don't think it is due to a Firewall. The link on /. points to an *.shtml page. If you try going in through the Coleman site there is a request for a username and password. Apparently someone protected the page - or hacked it.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
They don't actually post a price for the fuel on the site yet. They INCLUDE it with the unit. Hence the question, WTF is the price for the unit ITSELF?
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
Technically, yes. But it's not the whole constituents of the gas- it's got propane, butane, ethane, etc. in it. The bulk is methane, but there's more to it than that.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas