Coleman To Sell Portable Fuel Cell Generator

HobbySpacer writes " Popular Science reports that Coleman Powermate will soon start selling a small portable fuel cell power supply. The AirGen Fuel Cell Generator provides 1.2kW for up to 10 hours on a bottle of pure hydrogen. Interestingly, the company had to set up its own distribution system to insure it could deliver a refill anyplace in the US within 2 days. The unit, built by Ballard, goes for a pricey $8k but perhaps worth it if an indoor emergency backup is needed. Fuel cells can also be found for sale at the Fuel Cell Store and Greenvolt. Perhaps the hydrogen economy is closer than most people thought."

Comments

They're 8k now, but...

[Kaellenn]

Sure, at the beginning they are $8,000. I can't imagine this price will stay long once competition enters the field. It's similar to the way Apple does technology. Look at the flat-panel monitor for example. Prices have already begun to drop due to their exclusive distribution by Apple.

I'm glad to see that Coleman is entering this market. A bit pricy for most of us now, but at least this will start the ball rolling on clean-fuel generators.

How great IS this...?

[Ieshan]

You know, normally I wouldn't be thinking this way, but I suppose its the natural reaction.

If the world fuel "economy" switches to hydrogen, what happens to the countries which sole income is provided by oil and fossil fuels? Won't these places be absolutely devestated and ruined by the collapse of their energy-demand? Hydrogen power is an amazing thing, but it'd be something like suddenly replacing the staple foods in the world with chemical products - it dents a rather secure and stable part of our lifestyle and global economy.

I just hope something can be worked out before the "dream" of hydrogen power can be achieved... it's scary stuff, when you think about it.

Re:How great IS this...?

[stevelinton]

Hydrogen is not a primary source of energy. It's an energy transmission and storage system. As such, It has a lot of potential advantages over the current options -- long-distance power cables, tanks of gasoline, batteries, etc. but you still have to get energy from somewhere else to make it. The portability element makes some power generation options (off-shore wind and wave, desert solar, hydroelectric) more economic than they are at present when you have to build power lines, but oil and coal are not instantly obsolete.

Re:How great IS this...?

[hazem]

When I recently visited Kuwait, a major topic of discussion was how Kuwait can find ways to diversify their economy. The oil producing countries already know, barring some great discovery, that oil reserves will be depleated in 50 to 100 years. And Few of them are ready or willing to simply go back to hearding sheep, fishing, and perling to sustain their economies.

Finance may become an important source of revenue - I recently read an article about an attempt to unify the Stock Exchanges of the Arab countries. This will hopefully have the effect of making Arab stocks more attractive globally. This is in addition to efforts by the individual "burses" to make themselves more interesting to international investors.

Tourism will also be important - and will become even more so. If the Palestinians and Israelis can ever come to a solution, tourism there and in Jordan and Syria should boom! There's lots of neat stuff there! The gulf has fabulous diving and fishing, and of couse, is comfortably warm during European and American winters (and Asian, and Australian too). Even Saudi Arabia has seen the importance of tourism and has started to issue tourist visas!

But also consider, as another poster has mentioned, there is an entire petro-chemical industry. Oil is not just used to push our cars, planes and ships around the world. It's also used as a raw material to produce a vast array of products.

In the last 60 years, oil has helped bring properity and wealth to many parts of the Middle East. With careful planning and forsight, they will be able to build on this wealth and be ready when the oil "runs out", or is no longer needed as much as it is today.

I very much doubt that Coleman will destroy the Middle East!

Stop and think for a minute.

[schwap]

Although, fuel cells are a door into a world of cleaner, more abundant energy, it must be said that with every great inovation and evolution in technology comes with an even greater responsibility. If the hydrogen economy is here, then we have to consider where that hydrogen is coming from. Is it going to come from hydrocarbons like oil? Is all that hydrogen going to be generated from the electrolysis of water? Are we going to use bimass? If its oil, then we may be in just as bad a situation. The refinement of oil leaves a tremendouos number of nasty by products, not to mention our continued dependance on a non-renewable resource. If we get it from water, then what generates t he electricity? Solar and wind are options, but will require tremendous investement to fulfill the requirements to generate the amount of hydrogen necessary to replace the internal combustion engine. If its biomass, I havent seen the numbers to indicate the amount of byproducts to make harvesting economical, although I know it had been done on a limited scale. There is a give and a take. There are no free lunches. I want to know if we are going to decrease the amount of pollution we are dumping into the environment, or make the situation worse. Fuel cells, and hydrogen power in general, have proved themselves efficient and clean on a small scale, but untested on a large scale. I still see the same unanswered questions of production, distribution, maintenance and disposal.

let's hope it's not too cumbersome

[markj02]

Hydrogen in bottled form is, of course, fairly common and fairly safe, but it may simply be too inconvenient for this application. For something that heavy and big, maybe it would be more better if it could run on alcohol ("a bottle of vodka"), bottled gas, or some solid hydride that is activated with water and later recycled.

Re:Interesting possibility

[Technician]

That would be so cool, running one off of the "waste" of the other
Trying to invent a perpetual motion engine again? Fuel cell tech is just a variation of the motor driving a generator to power the motor. The net losses bring these to a halt fairly quickly. It will never have a net gain of power. All conversions have some loss to them. None are more than 100% effecient.

Some Other Points to Consider

[virg_mattes]

The cost of switching wouldn't be much of a consideration, because the easiest way to switch is attrition. Just require hydrogen burners on all new cars, and in a decade most of the cars on the road are hydrogen powered (think about those eye-level brake lights to see how attrition works). The real issue is switching things that don't turn over as fast as cars, like trucks (which burn a big percentage of the fossil fuels burned), planes, ships and power plants (which don't generally burn gas/oil but coal is a fossil fuel, after all). That's where the real costs involved in switching will pop up. So, even if cars all went to hydrogen, there would still be a large market for crude oil for a very long time (several decades at least).

Virg