Slashdot Mirror
Fuel Cell Powered Backup System
bassrat writes "Coleman just announced the world's first backup power system with Fuel Cells. Like any new technology, it's a bit pricey at $6K but the rest of the specs are pretty decent. Info at http://www.airgen.com/"
Seems great, a quiet generator. I used to set up carnival equipment, and this would be great to have. But how will I get the hydrogen? For industrial use, as the site says, there are only 3 places in the city I live in to get the fuel. And it's a big city! Plus, for residential and commercial use, it'll be pretty difficult to get a hold of the H. T he site says it will soon be availaible in exchangeable canisters, but I don't think it'll catch on until it's availble at grocery stores, like propane.
Ok, do you realize how much more dangerous than a simple propane tank a hydrogen tank is?
The danger of hydrogen vs hydrocarbon fuels is a hotly debated issue. Don't write it off as fact.
In fact, the Rocky Mountain Institute (who has been playing with Fuel Cells for more then a decade), says that Hydrogen is about as dangerous as Propane.
Specifically:
Tests conducted at the College of Engineering at Miami University aimed to find this out. 3000 cubic feet per minute of hydrogen was leaked from a vehicle tank and set alight. Over the course of the burn, temperature sensors inside the vehicle did not measure a raise of more than 1 or 2 degrees centigrade anywhere inside the vehicle. The temperature of the surface of the outside of the vehicle did not climb above that of a vehicle sitting in the sunshine!
This might sound unintuitive. But when a carbon-based fuel like gasoline burns, glowing hot soot particles transfer the heat to its surroundings--potentially including you. But because hydrogen contains no carbon, it burns cleanly without a residue of hot soot, producing little radiant energy. This means that a victim would have to be practically in the flame in order to get burned.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
The goodyear blimp is only a flying billboard, whereas the hindenberg was more like an ocean liner.
They were called airships because they were originally intended to do everything a ship could do, only from the air. The germans used airships to attack britain in the first world war and there were plans for airborne freight for go-anywhere delivery of parcels at a fraction of the cost of other courier systems.
I suppose that if engineers really wanted to work at it and spend a lot of money, we might have nuclear powered, hydrogen lofted aircraft carrier blimps defending america today - stealth airbases that could suddenly appear deep behind enemy lines and move around at will.
alternatively you could have a solar powered blimp-yacht for recreation: solar cells on the top of the air bag generate electricty, a scoop on the front collects h2o. electricity splits the h2o into hydrogen for loft and propulsion and oxygen. Fuel cells turn the hydrogen back into electricity on demand and drive the electric motors connected to the propellers.
What's not typically known is using electricity you can reletively easily seperate water in to Oxygen and Hydrogen. Both of which could be stored to later go through a fuel cell and turned back into water and electricity. These conversions are very near to 100% perfect in terms of energy transfer. I've seen it demostrated at an alternative-fuel car show. It was very interesting, and got me interested in Hydrogen as a possible fuel for cars (and other things).
Since this thing is supposed to be plugged into the wall anyways when it functions as a UPS, why can't it use the house voltage to generate the Hydrogen, rather then forcing you to buy bottles of the stuff. Granted, you may not be able to store it at the same preassures manufactures can, but I bet you could at least store enough in low pressures to keep you running for an hour or more, I mean how long does the average power-outage last? Last one I expiranced was only about 10 seconds.
As for the safety of Hydrogen, from what I undersand, a fiber-wrapped steel bottle would be quite safe, but since hydrogen is so very light, any and all flame would just go straight up. All the combustable gass would burn in a second or less.
Does anyone know how easy it is to run a carberated car off Hydrogen? Remove the carborator, insert metered hydrogen pipe, start engine. Because the fuel is not carbon-based, you don't even have to change your oil for litterally years (add some additives maybe...). The emissions are clean water, and it develops nearly the same ammount of power as regular Gasoline does. They only down sides are getting hydrogen in quantity, and the price (equivalent of about $3/gal).
"Power out of Thin Air." And, um, also hydrogen. These fuel cells are neat, but Coleman (according to the website) maintains that they're only meant for industrial applications at the present. Looking at the hydrogen canisters they currently have available, they are industrial-size jobs, several feet tall, filled with H2 gas at 2000 psi, and can provide hours of power. These types of cylinders are pretty dangerous no matter what is stored in them. I work at my university's physics department helium/nitrogen facility, and I'd consider the pressurized helium gas cylinders at room temp to be far more dangerous than the liquid nitrogen and liquid helium we also vend, because a damaged 2000 psi gas cylinder is essentially a 150 lb. steel missile. Still, if properly handled and stored, they aren't too much of a worry. The types of customers who would use the AirGen in its current state are the types who probably have some high-pressure cylinders of various gases in use at the worksite anyway- the hydrogen cylinders are certainly no more dangerous than the oxygen canisters used all the time in oxyacetylene welding.
What seems to be lost in all of the bickering over the explosiveness of hydrogen is the recognition of the real potential breakthrough of this product- the AirGen canister, the one that stores hydrogen as metal hydride. If it is as good as it sounds, it's a major step towards solving the fuel storage problems that have held fuel cells back for so long. Unfortunately, they don't give much in the way of specs- I'd be very interested to know how much uptime that 15 lb. canister produces in comparison to the pressurized cylinders, and what the uptime/price ratio is. (It generally costs about 20-30 bucks to fill one of the large hydrogen cylinders, which suggests that it'd only cost about 2-3 dollars an hour to provide clean emergency power. I can see why people are interested.) I'd also like to know more about the metal hydride it uses- lithium, or is it something else, like nickel or palladium? Storing hydrogen as a metal hydride is a good way to make it a lot safer and more convenient, but most metal hydrides are still extraordinarily reactive- I can remember all the reactions from organic chemistry that used lithium aluminum hydride to carry out heavy-duty reductions. Eschewing the huge steel cylinder/bomb to provide hydrogen fuel is a great idea, but I'd rather not have to keep a Type D fire extinguisher handy near my computer. Unfortunately, I get the feeling that specs are minimal because the AirGen canister is not quite ready for prime time- which is a familiar story for fuel cells.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."