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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/"
While it sounds like science fiction, fuel cell technology is now readily available to industrial users!
I mean, first thing I think of when I hear "imagine a machine that inhales oxygen" is piles of passed out sysadmins in the server room floor.
I mean...what true geek woudn't feel proud to have a backup system in his house with a real potential to spontaneously explode (even if the chances are nil).
Chaos, panic, disorder...my work here is done.
Do I really want to be carrying around pressurized containers of hydrogen near me? Near my servers? in my house?
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.
Somebody explain to me how a $6K fuel-cell backup power system is better than...
The batteries in that APC are evil nasty horrible little beasts when it comes to disposal after they've reached the end of their life.
Sure, your APC is cheaper, but the Fuel Cell Idea is cleaner.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
...you would have an unlimited supply of fuel. Just make sure to bring along a good supply of beans for your camping trip, and you're set!
Maybe the price will go down once the technology is mainstream and the cells are mass-produced.
Of course this means that they have to come with some sort of standard... let's hope they don't hand the task to the DVD guys...
The ENIAC Demo Competition
from their "benefits" page:
> Quiet Very low noise operation
so is a battery backup - Okay maybe it's a little more noisy but I have been next to huge APCs and they are completely drowned out by server hum and cannot be heard anyhow. My personal UPS does not make a single sound.
> Air Pollution-Free Operation By-products are heat and water vapor Renewable Energy Powered by two of the most abundant elements -- hydrogen and oxygen -- in the universe
No arguing, but soooo? (more later)
> Clean Energy Perfect sine wave electricity to protect sensitive electronics
okay, so is a UPS, again.
> Indoor Use No carbon monoxide emissions
I am tired of typing "okay so is UPS"
> Non-Stop Power Continuous electricity generated as long as hydrogen is supplied.
I should hope!
now onto the blab:
Yes yes I know for a lot of trouble, this makes a good portable generator (maybe). But they are saying this will be a good power-backup too? my ass.
1) UPS has battery that runs out. This has hydrogen that runs out. same deal.
2) UPS can be re-charged when the power comes back - this I have to buy more hydrogen tube thingys
3) I am guessing that this uses the ROOM oxygen? like, the one we need to breath with?
4) where exactly is the water (byproduct) going? I remember that fuel cells has a high temperature - I assume vapor? as in bumping up the humidity to some insane levels in the server room? Even if it does not - I would think there need to be new pipework / whatever to carry away the condensation.
Let's not forget that it probabbly cost a bundle starting off / maintain too.
Now with that vented - it would be pretty cool to get one to replace one of those noisy generators for a motor-home or something - but THEN, it's designed for indoor use (i think)? wtf? and i have to either carry AirGen cylinders (low pressure) (read: does not last long), or hydrogen cylinders (read: really dangerous) around instead of just getting some gasoline at the station?
erm... I will stick with a portable generator (for power generation) and UPS (for backup) thank you.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Like any new technology, it's a bit pricey at $6K.
Bullshit! I can think of lots of new technologies that would be a bargain at twice the price!
(rimshot)
Wait! Don't leave! I have more...
A-hem.
From the page:
"Imagine... A machine that inhales oxygen, combines with hydrogen and exhales electricity.
While it sounds like science fiction, fuel cell technology is now readily available to industrial users!"
Okay, now let me try:
Imagine... A machine that inhales oxygen, combines with [anything flammable] and exhales [any carrier of work].
Sound like science fiction? Think again, this so-called "combustion engine" will revolutionize...
wait! wait!
Don't leave.
I have more.
Okay, watch:
How do you back up data during a power outage?
Put it in reverse! {rimshot}
(i.e. have your backup solution produce energy instead of using it, thereby turning back the direction of time in much the same way that backing up the wrong way down a one-way road --
Wait! Don't leave!
I have a parenthesis to close:
)
There.
Uhm, yeah.
Seriously though.
And here I put on my insightful hat.
This could be great in hospitals!
input H + O
where do you think the carbon would come from to get CO or CO2?
You should get out water (H2O). You would reduce the oxygen level though.
And no, it doesn't take hydrogen out of the air, that's the fuel in the fuel cell.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html
With a large hydrogen canister, your runtime is significantly (as in an order of magnitude - YMMV) longer.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
Anyway, I believe the chemical equation goes something like this:
So, the 'waste' products are water and heat. No carbon {mon|di}oxide byproducts.
All these people whining about how explosive hydrogen is etc etc. Look folks, you have a tankful of gasoline riding under your arse in your car, you have a natural gas furnace, stove, and water heater, and use a propane barbeque. These things are more of a threat than a little hydrogen. Are we stuck at the Hindenburg? Remember that was caused by the flammable hull of the ship, not the hydrogen itself!
As for these folks saying "oh no, it's using all the oxygen" - I sure hope your rooms aren't airtight, they shouldn't be - oxygen will flow in to replace that being used with proper ventilation. Use your brains people.
This, of course, is what your air conditioner system is for. It's not there just to cool the place; the AC also dehumidifies the air. I suspect that most uses of these units would not drive up the humidity so fast that it would do much harm; by the time it gets there, you should have either powered off equipment, or turned on your diesel generator. (You do have one for your mission-critical equipment, don't you?)
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Now it's $6,000. It's getting there.
At least it's been several months. ;-)
--
Runnin' around, robbin' banks all whacked on the Scooby Snacks...
using the websites own calculations it would cost $30.00 for 6hrs @1,000 watt output continous.
.(around 150watts)
Thats a fare bit of power but my 400watt inverter and $100.00 deepcycle battery keeps my server up for 10hrs
{ Pillar candles great for when the power fails and you cant see the keyboard..
Anything less is simply a stop-gap measure, not worth exploring.
In a move aimed at stifflings UPS's competitive advantage in the backup power supply market, FedEx invested $2B in this new Fuel Cell technology.
According to TIA/EIA-569-A the humidity of computer/network equipment spaces should be 30%-50%. These fuel cells let out barely even drops of water and they create heat to evaporate it off to if you have even basic ariflow in the area it wont mess up your equipment.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
This, of course, is what your air conditioner system is for. It's not there just to cool the place; the AC also dehumidifies the air.
Not necessarily. Best if you check if that holds true for your particular AC, as cooling and dehumidifying are two separate functions.
Did I miss something there?
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
And, you can buy additional hydrogen canisters for added run time.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
The batteries in that APC are evil nasty horrible little beasts when it comes to disposal after they've reached the end of their life.
Did you happen to notice that this wonderful fuel cell also contains sealed lead-acid batteries, which are the same "evil nasty horrible little beasts" you'll find in your typical APC unit? Now, perhaps there is much less battery in the unit, but regardless it still contains the same type of battery.
First...
The capacity of the generator is only 1000 watts! What the hell? that's not more than 3 PCs! You get some really quiet generators that would do the same for a lot less.
Second...
What's the deal with a 1 year warranty? Surely, a backup system is meant to be reliable. You'd think the company would atleast put a 5 year warranty on this thing.
Third...
"Provides electricity as long as hydrogen fuel is provided". First, hydrogen is flammable. Second, they don't seem to mention what the consumption rate of this generator is...which leads me to the third point - hydrogen fuel will be quite expensive.
Looks a little iffy if you ask me.
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
Wife: Oh honey, you take my breath away.
Husband: No, dear. It's our new Fuel Cell Powered Backup System. I think we just had a blackout.
There has to be some kind of high-capacity battery, or else it would be useless as part of a UPS.
I'm wondering if there are any grant or tax incentives to buy this, like there with some solar technologies.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Lots of posts rant about oxygen deprivation... if you're sitting in an air tight room somehow you're probably not going to be worried that there is one more oxygen breather, seriously, ever heard of ventillation?
I'd be more concerned about how much additional heat and humididty this thing is producing and whether the server room tech had accounted for it before leaving for the weekend.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
This idea has been floating around for some time, and it is nice to see it being actually implemented. (Even GM's Hy-wire car uses fuel cells). IMO, this technology hasn't matured as yet, and I will NOT consider it matured till the day these cells will run on WATER itself and NOT hydrogen. More than 70% of the world is covered by water, can you imagine how much energy we have, potentially ???
I must admit though , I can imagine nomads in the deserts running their water powered buggies and then stopping for a drink from their buggie's fuel(water) tank !!!!!!
|/________
|\A|ALYS|
Lets see so far we have:
1. Hydrogen = nitro glycerin.
I'm sorry to spoil your pyromanic dreams, but hydrogen is not going to suddenly explode. It has to mix with air before it becomes dangerous, even then it burns so quickly that you would have to compress it into just the wrong size room to cause problems. But hey we already have bottles of propane, butane, LPG, etc. They in my opinion are more dangerous, because they are heavier then air, which means they burn around you, hydrogen flashes above you.
Hydrogen is also relativly easy to detect electronically in the air, so monitoring isn't a problem. If necessary add the good aweful smelling gas they put into natural gas.
2. It'll suck all the oxygen out of the room.
Think about it for a few more seconds will ya? All rooms require ventilation. There are plenty of indoor generators, we cook with gas, etc, etc. Any ventilation requirements will be taken into account when the equipment is installed.
3. Why no use larger batteries.
Batteries have to be recharged between uses. New gas can be added to a running system. Oh but so can batteries be recharged by diesel, or swap in new batteries. This is the same problem.
Generators need more fuel, fuel cells need more fuel, batteries need to be replaced. Which one is more convienant to keep running, depends on how long you need it to run, the availability of fuel, maintainence costs (generators need to be serviced), how long you expect to run on backup power, floor space. So fuel cells would be useful in many situations, think more big picture, and stop thinking about a particular situation. (Eg: use less batteries(20mins), fall back to fuel cell (4+ hours), call in generator.)
4. Fuel hard to find.
Yes, but it doesn't have a short shelf life or anything, what was the point? This is for backup purposes yes? Have you ever tried to replace the worn out batteries in a UPS? As the product becomes more popular gas will be easier to find.
5. Generates water in server room.
Magically enough so do air conditioners which are also in server rooms. We have invented magical devices called condensers, pipes and drains to deal with this.
6. It's not like you can hear generator over the servers.
This is also useful in areas not surrounded by loud machines. Most generators below a certain size are rather noisy. Fuel cells are silent. People using generators on farms, or island power supplies, etc would be interested in this. Once again stop thinking about a particular application.
7. You can recharge UPS when power comes back on, but you still have to buy more fuel.
Two issues:
a) Cost: You are still paying for replacement fuel (The electricity to recharge the batteries). And batteries are horribly inefficient, you use much more power charging them, than you get back out of them.
b) Convieniance: Batteries recharge automatically, but you have to manually change the fuel cannisters. Quite true for this design. However this problems goes away with natural gas powered fuel cells (Same deal as electricity). Reversible fuel cells are also under development. They use main power to split water back into oxygen and hydrogen. But you get similiar loses to recharging batteries, and you have to figure out where all the oxygen will go. (If you've seen a hydrogen fire, then seen an oxygen fire, you'd understand why I'm more worried by the oygen).
If I could pour water in this thing and have it make hydrogen for itself, that might increase its usefulness.
Or if I hooked up a dehumidifier to it, and put it on top so the water would run into the fuel making tank....OMG!
I've just invented a Perpetual Motion machine!
Of course, having water around servers and switches makes for the Worlds Most Dangerous Server Room and many headaches...so maybe I've invented the Perpetual Motrin Machine.
1) UPS has battery that runs out. This has hydrogen that runs out. same deal.?
Not same deal. You can keep popping out any buying more hydrogen cannisters and go indefinately with the fuel cell. Your UPS will buy you some time (enough time to shut down your networks safely) but not to continue operations. Essentially it is generator and UPS all rolled into one.
In obtaining more hydrogen, you can either buy it or you can generate it yourself (though electrolysis - via solar or mains). You can see the latest fuel cell stories at Future Energies.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
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.
By gently heating a hydrocarbon fuel with a catylist, you can get nydrogen gas out of it. If this technology matures you could end up with a portable powerplant that runs on pure H2 gas and a wide variety of other fuels.
check out the info on direct methanol fuel cells
they should bundle it with a mains powered hydrogen compressor, so you can store hydrogen safely in your own canisters when times are good.
I'm betting that running hydrogen through a normal air compressor would be asking for trouble.
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).
Given the uneasiness that people have about hydrogen canisters and potential explosions, does anyone else think it is a bit odd that the promo shots feature exploding "Coming Soon!" signs?
Maybe they are just trying to be prophetic.
"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."
You need to quantify "good", as there are many ways, all with their own ups and downs.
Harvesting Jupiter or the solar corona has been tossed around theoretical and fictional deep space missions. This is a great way to obtain massive amounts of hydrogen. It's also out of most people's budget, so I assume you mean terrestrial means.
Though you can't "create" hydrogen unless you've got a matter-energy converter in your back pocket, there are lots of ways to obtain it. The most readily available form to anyone is also one that used to be a common high school lab experiment. It is seperating hydrogen and oxygen from water by applying electrical current. Solar energy is freely available for this purpose. Essentially, you bottle the harvested electrons in hydrogen and oxygen atoms, removing the covalent bond that holds those two gasses together as water. The Fuel Cell's PEM then does the reverse, stealing electrons while bonding the gasses.
There are other terrestrial sources of hydrogen, but I love this one. Oil companies typically burn off hydrogen with other gasses as "waste" while they're drilling oil out. You wouldn't believe how much they burn off. Imagine if just ONE of those oil companies had had the foresight to BOTTLE that stuff, instead of burning it.
I'm as mimsy as the next borogove but your mome raths are completely outgrabe.
And that would most likely come from electricity. One of the most prevalent sources of said energy is coal burning power plants. Now, I know that there are a lot of dams that provide us with power too, but those also have costs. The Northwest has only recently come to realize that putting dams on rivers threatens fish, etc. If there is some vast reserve of pure hydrogen that someone can find, then great. But until then, these fuel cells simply shift the pollution to the site of the power plants. Please don't get me wrong, I love the idea of driving a car with a fuel cell sometime in the future; or even using the Coleman generator in my house. Truly great would be using a solar panel array to split the water, then using the result to feed a fuel cell later. Peace (first post! yay!)
Somebody explain to me how a $6K fuel-cell backup power system is better than...oh, I dunno....three $250 APC's hooked up in series?
I know this is a tangent, but it's sort of interesting, and I just can't keep my mouth shut. You're not supposed to plug a UPS into another UPS (at least the consumer models). A friend at work found this out the hard way. He ran a UPS off of another similar UPS, and one of them (not sure which) overheated to the point that it melted.
Of course, for every story like this, there's a counterexample where somebody gets away with it, and I'm sure someone here will post such a story :) In any case, my friend was officially told by tech support that he had done a bad thing, and they refused to ship a replacement unit.
If so, maybe it was caused by a sysadmin snaring their ankle in those power cords hanging out of the front of the unit.. or maybe that power switch sticking out like a chair prevented a falling object from hitting the ground :/
I hate to be mean, as it's obviously a new product, and from a company that is likely new to machine room ergonomics, but it appears to have a few case design flaws that will probably contribute to downtime as much as the power outage the unit was designed to prevent.
Sure is a cute little thing though.. maybe in a future version they'll recess the cords in a well, and recess the power switch away from where it can accidentally be tripped. I like the case design otherwise.
65 dba (a bit louder than a normal conversation) doesn't seem like a "pretty decent" spec to me. My UPS is a heck of a lot quieter seeing as I can't even hear it.
Good review of the fuel issue. Do you know what kind of "energy density" you can get with hydrogen locked up in a metal-hydride? Is it about the same as, say, methanol?
What excites me about this product is that a) I can now stop seeming like a crackpot when I wax poetic about the wonders of fuel cell technologeh (most people don't seem to believe how revolutionary this is! why?!?) and b) now (or soon) me and my friends can have a nice, hippy-friendly rave in the middle of nowhere, and won't have to worry about masking the sound of a generator with MASSIVE WAVES OF TECHNO AND GOA-TRANCE. Granted, we'd probably play it that loud anyway... but what about the breakdowns and ambient passages?
Also we'd have to hook up a couple of these puppies to make sure we have a lots of power (I think the specs say it can push 1600W for a couple of seconds, maybe the next generation will have more oomph). But I really look forward to getting one in a couple of years... Instant Burning Man! just add water!
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
many (most?) coleman products are manufactured by other companies who then pay coleman to use the brand name. a brand name can really change how much you can charge and how well something sells. i worked for a company that sold crappy portable tvs and radios, among other things, that were not selling well enough so they licensed the coleman name (for like $0.70 per piece) and the sales went up. i wonder how much the coleman name cost this case. funny thing, that consumer perception.
fear is the mind killer
You can use pumps for this, and I believe the same gas-law principle is used in sonic fridges.
The fact that air conditioners tend to dehumidify at the same time (water condenses on the chilled coils, and then is usually drained outside) actually tends to reduce the effectiveness of the air conditioner, since some of the heat pumped out of the room is actually the heat of vaporization of the water.
In a free society you are who you say you are. -- Mumford
I've been hoping this technology would reach the consumer market (who 'da thunk Coleman would be the one?). Been reading about this in Mother Earth News for years.
Yes, you could produce your own hydrogen quite easily from electricity and water. The problem here is to produce pure hydrogen without any residual oxygen left in the line or holding tank *very dangerous*. So don't try this at home without researching it! A proper setup would burn off the residual oxygen in the hydrogen line using (guess what) another fuel cell. Purified hydrogen can be stored at moderate pressure in inspected propane tanks -- though you go through a lot of tanks as the energy per pound is quite low.
Purify the oxygen output using another fuel cell, and you have medically pure oxygen! Wouldn't those medical supply companies hate to see people producing their own!
So what I'm really waiting for to hit the mass market is a safe inexpensive hydrogen producing machine. It would make storing electrical energy cheap for windmill generators or pv cells.
Some of the less informed here think you could produce electricity from water itself. Water doesn't contain the potential for producing power (caveat follows) -- you have to put in power before you can take it back! My apologies to those already using the trace amounts of H3 (heavy water) to power the Mr. Fusion on their DeLoreans.
And yes, you could run a fuel cell on methane. It takes an extra step and another precious metal (iridium, palladium? I forgot) in addition to the platinum layer. On the output, it generates CO2 in addition to water vapor. Not quite as clean as pure hydrogen, but who wouldn't want to run their computer on chickens**t gas!
A pig farmer in Africa produced methane from all the manure and (using conventional generators) supplied all the electricity for his farm and home. Biggest advantage though was the cleanliness of his farm -- no stink, almost no flies! I'd love to see (and smell) a lot more farms use this technology.
Methane's also very abundant in the form of hydrides underneath the ocean. Between that and the farms methane could supplant most of the oil in our economy. Potential for world change abounds.
Old news, guys. This was posted a YEAR ago almost to the month on Slashdot.
The same comments apply today as they did then.
6K for something that you can't really get fuel for. And if you can get it, you will pay for it. Dearly.
Powering and paying for this thing for a day on Hydrogen makes Diesel look like the fuel of the future.
It is a step in the right direction in terms of science. But in terms of people wanting to pay for it?
No, I didn't think so.
Memories of Colman lanterns and stoves.
Cute, but did you bother looking at the site? There are two fuel options... pressurized hydrogen tanks for industrial use (with some potential for explosion), and low-pressure hydride cannisters for small-scale and residential use. It's pretty much impossible to coax an explosion out of hydrogen entrained in a hydride.
--Larry
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence
All you need to do is plug it in and you're all set. In fact, you could even plug it into the output of the device and get it to run forever*.
* Void where prohibited by thermodynamic laws.
--- Jason Olshefsky
Karma: Poser (mostly affected by adding this line long after everyone else did)
The week before Thanksgiving, I walked into our server room and found therein the instantly recognizable smell of hydrogen sulfide. Call it "rotten eggs" if you will; it always reminds me rather more of volcanic sulfur vents. (Perhaps that's because I've never been around rotten eggs in quantity.) Anyhow, ours is a science research institution that certainly handles its share of odd chemicals, so my first thought was the same as the server room manager's when I asked him about it:
"Oh, something must have gotten in the ventilation from the labs. It'll blow out."
After the twinge-inducing smell didn't go away for a day or so, I went to our boss -- a former chemist. He seemed to think it was worth a deeper investigation, and soon we were sniffing around the server room trying to locate the source of the smell.
"Seems to be coming from over here." ... y30w, this one's hot!"
"From these UPSes?
Presently we opened the UPS cabinet and discovered (at this point to not a bit of surprise) a leaky battery, and a trail of nasty-looking rust along the chassis. Sulfuric acid plus iron yields hydrogen sulfide plus red iron oxide: 3H2SO4 + 8Fe = 3H2S + 4Fe2O3.
Generally the waste product of burning H20 and air at high temperature also include OH, NO, NO2, CO, H202, HCN, and about every other combination of O, H, N and C, your imagination can supply. The quantities of these other factors are dependant on temperature and pressure, so the amounts of these other things should be small in a fuel cell, so long as temperatures are kept down.
UTC Fuel Cells announced the sale of seven PC25TM fuel cell power plants to Verizon to provide primary power for a critical call-routing center on Long Island, New York. The seven units, which each produce 200 kilowatts of electricity and 900,000 Btus of usable heat, will form the largest fuel cell installation in the world, surpassing the PC25 installation at the Connecticut Juvenile Training Center in Middletown, Conn. Verizon will install the units at a 332,000 square-foot facility in Garden City that delivers local phone service to some 40,000 Verizon customers on a 24-hour basis. The facility is also home to more than 1,000 employees who handle various functions, including answering customer calls.
The fuel cells, which together will generate 1.4 megawatts of electricity, will provide primary electrical power for the facility. Verizon also plans to install four natural gas powered generators to operate in parallel with the fuel cells as a hybrid system that can generate up to 4.4 megawatts of electrical power. The generators will serve as backup power, along with the electrical grid and batteries. Last year, UTC Fuel Cells installed six units at the Connecticut Juvenile Training School in Middletown. The units form a 1.2-megawatt microgrid to provide power to buildings on the campus. This is currently the largest fuel cell installation in the world.
A fuel cell is an electrochemical device that combines hydrogen, or hydrogen-rich fuel, and oxygen to produce electricity, heat and water. Fuel cells operate without combustion, making them almost pollution free. While a traditional generating system produces as much as 25 pounds of pollutants to generate 1,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity, the PC25 power plant produces less than an ounce.
UTC Fuel Cells has manufactured the PC25 power plant since 1991 and delivered more than 245 to customers in 19 countries on five continents. Those power plants have together accumulated nearly 5 million hours of operation.
More info: http://www.utc.com/press/2002-03-20.htm
I'd also like to know how much oxygen this thing will suck up. Will this thing asphyxiate itself (and the people) in a well-sealed room/building?
--zawada
In Soviet Russia, the Beowulf cluster imagines you!
This is another dup, but I'll be nice since it was almost a year ago (and the price seems to have dropped).
Well lets see, my diesel genset cost about half as much, produces about 7 times more electrcity, and will run for 10 days of 133 lbs worth of fuel producing the same about of power the fuel cell does as opposed to the 11 hours this coleman fuelcell will run. Ok I know a lot of that 133 lbs for the hydrogen fuel cell is the canister, but still even if half the weight is canister and only say 60-70 lbs is fuel my diesel will still run for days after the fuelcell has exhausted its hydrogen.
About the only differnce is I have to run my generator in its generator shed outside, and it is noisy, but still I think the fuel economy, ease of obtaining diesel and the fact that if worse comes to worse I can run bio-diesel (which is chemically altered french fry oil). Sorry still sticking with diesel here.
Hello? Is this slashdot or a luddite convention? This thing is new technology. Fuel cells have been around a while, but this is the first time that private citizens can get their hands on them. THat being said, I think its wonderful. As more competition comes about and the public will learn of their benefits, I expect to see more of these little wonders, making more power at cheaper prices.
Think of the benefits.
A more powerful version could be built into new homes that would automatically kick in and provide silent, backup power for the refrigerator and freezer, to keep food from spoiling.
This could possibly kick off the infrastructure necessary for having hydrogen based vehicles replace the current internal combustion engine powered vehicles of today.
It could finally allay the public's fears about hydrogen being a volatile, explosive gas.
Increased competition and development to make smaller, more powerful hydro generators will also translate into cars. A 1000 mile range hydro powered car that goes 0-60 in 4 secs with comfortable seating for four, yet puts out almost no pollutants could be in our future if these things were to be seriously adopted by society.
13 year old white supremacists are shitty web designers.
That article is about about phosphoric acid fuel cells. That is a mature technology that's been in commercial use for over a decade. It runs at a high temperature, does not scale well below a quarter megawatt and takes time to start up. They compete with gas turbines.
PEM fuel cells are just beginning to appear in commercial products. They cost more per kilowatt, but can be scaled down to the size of a laptop battery and can go from zero to full power in a fraction of a second. They compete with batteries and small internal combustion engines, mainly in mobile applications.
See also this overview of fuel cell technologies and this table.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
Well then, your friend needs to wise up a bit.
...secondly he told tech support that he did ...
First he chained them
See where honesty gets you?
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
The flame is invisible so if the tank is on fire, it may not be obvious. When they were setting up for the first Hydrogen bomb test, they had to vent some hydrogen for some reason or another. They lit the escaping gas and all they could sense was the noise from the flame - they couldn't see it. Unfortunately, neither could the few seagulls who flew directly over the flame and fell dead at the physcist's feet. I hear roasted seagull isn't very tasty.
- MODEL NO. FC01001
- POWER 1000 Continuous Watts
- 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 NexaTM Power Module
- SURGE PROTECTION 360 Joules
- BATTERIES Sealed Lead Acid
- WEIGHT (LESS FUEL) 101 lbs.
- DIMENSIONS 27.3" x 15.8" x 19"
- UL APPROVED Yes
- CSA APPROVED Yes
- WARRANTY 1 Year
I though the point was to eliminate batteries?This is not the sig line you are looking for... -- Old Jedi Sig Line Trick
I wish there weren't but part of the Bush energy plan included a push for fuel cells so there's probably govt. money mixed in there somewhere.