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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
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!
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.
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
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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)
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.
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