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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.
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.
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
What is with everyone's paranoia about hydrogen?
Its perfectly safe.. Think propane tanks and for how many different things they are safely used. This is the same thing.
"but.. but.. what about the hindenberg (sp?)? I mean that is totally unrelated to pressurized hydrogen containers but it blew up!"
complete and utterly unfounded fears like this are what is hindering the adoption of cool technologies like fuel cells.
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.
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 Hindenberg's hydrogen burned off in seconds. The big problem was the paint that used powdered aluminum, which was also electrically conductive. Add one significant spark (possible lightning) plus powdered aluminum (main volatile ingredient in the shuttle's solid-fuel boosters) and you get a big fire.
So yes, the hydrogen fears are minor. Had the Hindenberg been painted in a normal color, and not shiny silver, airships may have survived for some time to come.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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)