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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."
Moderators should be allowed to moderate articles as (-1) Duplicate. :-)
Ross
My dad used to work for a Coleman related company (basically just licensing their products and producing them under a different name.) He had mentioned something like this quite a while ago, it's cool to see it made it farther than the development stage. The image of the Coleman Powermate looks quite familiar, and unchanged from what I had seen quite awhile ago. As the article mentions, the price tag is quite steep, but may prove useful to the medical industry, although I would think at this point it would be a 3rd stage (or 4th, or 5th..) power supply backup. It also seems quite useful for a military use, as it is quite portable, although I'm sure a military version would be a bit more durable and have a better useful life (in terms of backup power and actual physical durability). The fact that it requires pure, bottled hydrogen seems like it's biggest downfall though. I hope Coleman or other manufacturers help to bridge the gap to something more useful for the home consumer.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
Hydrogen needs to react with plenty of oxygen to explode. There won't be nearly enough oxygen getting to the hydrogen molecules to cause much of an explosion. A canister of gun powder would be more explosive since oxygen is included in the mixture.
Oil isn't just used to create energy. It is used in the maufacture of most thing: plastic, detergents, synthetic fabrics etc. So I don't think that it would destroy the income of oil making countries, but it certainly would hurt them.
You have some very good points. It is good that we raise these kinds of questions now and begin testing the viability of this "new" technology. I would also suggest that we support the strong growth of a hydrogen economy. Its potential benefits are far greater then the green and clean arguement always put forth. The ability to move closer to an off-grid or neighborhood-grid based electrical system is an incredible boon. Massive powerlines, and with them transmission loss (not to forget eyesores), will be needed less and less. Power outages will be fewer and effect smaller groups of people. A big military benfit of a local grid system is that it is very hard to knock out power to any large population. Another benefit is the pure water generated. While not very tasty to drink it is wonderful for use in things like laundry and dish washing. Of course you can also drink it and know for certain that the water contains almost no traces of any sort of contamination (short of whatever may be introduced on site).
Hydrogen fuel systems are safe and easy to repair. They have almost no moving parts. They are safe because hydrogen as a gas is non-toxic (unless taken in massive doses, but seldom does it stick around to allow that) and though it can ignite it does not burn like other fuels. Pressurized tanks pose a small hazard risk, but no wherenear the potential danger fossil fuels have. Hydrogen when it ignites goes boom once and is all gone, fossil fuels however can burn for quite awhile. Also the pressure tanks are typically built to take abuse and punishment and not explode.
As for how to get the hydrogen (and transport it) well those remain the greater challenges. Something to look forward to really. You can bet though that whoever comes up with an effient means to obtain, transport and use hydrogen power will find themselves sitting on a potentially spectular gold mine. And besides you know you can't wait for the day when you don't have to stop at a gas when its negative 30 degrees with a wind chill of negative 60.
(Gas, Nat Gas, Prop Fueled), Vangard Engine, 9000/8000W, 120/240V Output, 4.5gal tank, ~1.8 to 3.7 hr runtime (List Price $2489) Our Price $2259
9 KW multifuel generator... $5500 will get you plenty of ventilation, silencers, IR signature reduction, 1000 gallons of fuel, sattelite DSL instalation and service for a year and a new Dell to plug into it so you can troll slashdot and surf pr0n.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Guerrilla news have some interesting things to say about George Bush family's dealings with the bin Laden family and why some banks were excluded from being watched for blood money.
There are also reports of the CIA meeting with Osama in July of this year.
Indeed. I saw a map of average anual wind speesds for North America, and you now what the wind-power eqivalent of the mideast is? That big chain of islands of the coast of Alaska. Seems the winds come off of the Pacific really fast. If you put really big windgenerators there and use the electricity to electrolyse water for hydrogen(does the pure oxegyn have much use?) and then maybe build a new pipline to pump it back to the contiguous states. How much would it cost?
In my opinion, Ballard's residential 1-kW Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cells are far more interesting. These units allow you to eliminate the electrical utility completely. Gas is used for heating and generating all the power the house needs.
As a bonus, this would also eliminate the need to have that mess of power lines on most streets in North America (although the cable companies and telcos might have something to say about this). I think this would (maybe) also help lay the infrastructure for the Hydrogen economy.
'Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions.' B. Pascal
If you are cracking hydrocarbons to get the hydrogen for fuel cells, the process _may_ still be cleaner than burning hydrocarbons in several ways:
1) Cogeneration. Waste heat from fuel cell could be used to heat buildings, thereby using less fuel overall. This is also possible with conventional power systems (gas turbines and steam plants), but who wants to have their house or office close enough to a power plant to make this work? Fuel cells are quiet and don't emit smoke, so there's no problem sticking them in the basement in place of the furnace.
2) Lower carbon emissions: The cracker will emit CO2; the reaction is approximately (CH2)n + n(H2O) --> n(CO2) + 2n(H2), and you get the same CO2 emission from one gallon of oil as you would by burning it. But power plants are under 40% efficient at turning heat into electricity, and internal combustion motors are considerably worse. If the cracker/fuel cell combo is more efficient, then you burn less fuel, emit less CO2, and arab shieks have to cut back on the cadillac purchases.
3) Zero combustion pollution: The fuel cell doesn't emit smoke particles, unburned hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, or sulfur oxides. The cracker might, but it's probably cleaner than burning the fuel.
However, the economics of fuel cells running on H2 cracked from fossil fuel are dubious. That Coleman fuel cell, without a cracker, has a capital cost over 4 times that of a motor-generator. I'm not sure about running costs; a motor-generator is a fuel hog and takes considerable maintenance, but relying on essentially sole-source bottled hydrogen is bound to be expensive too. I don't know about the maintenance requirements or lifetime of the cracker or fuel cell; I would expect the cell to be virtually maintenance free until something corrodes away and the cell is scrap, but would the cracker tend to plug up with tar or something?
So far, fuel cells have only been viable when someone is willing to pay a lot more for a power source that you don't notice running in the basement, or for extremely specialized high-budget things like Apollo space capsules. Of course, if the H2 is electrolized from water by power from renewable sources, then the fuel cost is virtually zero. But the cost of a big enough wind turbine, electrolyzer, compressor, storage tank, and fuel cells make for an extremely high capital cost.
Also note that while environmentalists may love your wind turbine right now, if they ever become a practical power source, they're going to be out there with picket signs complaining about your giant bird blender...
I actually saw a legitimate proposal for this type of energy recovery that involved dirigibles which makes sense in a weird sort of way. The concept is to use Aleutian windmills to generate electricity to separate hydrogen (and, of course, oxygen) from seawater. Then, they would use the hydrogen to inflate large dirigibles that would carry suspended tanks of compressed oxygen south to the U.S. When the dirigible arrives, the envelope is deflated into capture tanks and the dirigible is packed on a ship for the return trip to Alaska. Safety is not such a concern as it was with the Hindenburg because the oxygen is in suspended tanks that can be dropped in the ocean in the event of a fire so they don't cause an explosion, the envelope won't be nearly as flammable as dirigibles were when the Hindenburg went down, and for the biggest safety boost they can be flown by remote with no human crew, over the Pacific until they're near their landing zone so the risk of collateral damage from a crash is minimized.
I can imagine that getting this whole thing to be cost-effective would be tough, but technically it's doable.
Virg
There's so many points to contend here that I can only begin to cover them all, but I'll try.
First, OPEC doesn't comprise only Middle Eastern countries, unless you consider Indonesia and Venezuela to be a part of the Middle East. Second, there are member nations in the Middle East (like Kuwait, for example) that don't exactly promote anti-American sentiment. Third, disallowing anti-American sentiment (or anti-anything sentiment, for that matter) is unamerican in nature, since it involves governmental suppression of free speech. Fourth, we would have more problems in the region if it was destabilized than not. Do you really think that wiping out the economies of these countries is likely to foster a more democratic or equitable society in any of them, or is it more likely to cause even more powermongering (in which it has been historically proven that the more extreme factions get control than the more moderate)?
Maybe you should spend more time considering why these countries have such large constituencies of anti-American people, and you'll get a clearer idea as to realistic ways to change that sentiment. Reducing our reliance on foreign (and domestic) petroleum is a laudable goal, but not for the purpose of damaging OPEC.
>If the world fuel "economy" switches to hydrogen,
>what happens to the countries which sole income is
>provided by oil and fossil fuels?
In almost all of these countries, the income generated by oil goes to a few people and to western oil companies and is not invested in meaningful development. The world's biggest oil producer, saudi arabia, is one of the most medieval country there is , and calling it stable sounds like a very bad joke.
The oil economy does infinitely more harm than good both to those who have it and to those who don't. Getting rid of it would be a blessing.
Maybe not for Norway. But all rules need an exception.
Dev elpizw tipota, dev phoboumai tipota eimai lephteros http://euclidian.org
of my electric car?? ANd jsut plug the car into it?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.