New Fuel Cell Twice As Efficient As Generators

Hank Green writes "A new kind of Solid Oxide Fuel Cell has been developed that can consume any kind of fuel, from hydrogen to bio-diesel; it is over two times more efficient than traditional generators. Acumentrics is attempting to market the technology to off-grid applications (like National Parks) and also for home use as personal Combined Heat and Power plants that are extremely efficient (half as carbon-intensive as grid power.)"

Comments

Half as carbon intensive as grid power?

[Viol8]

Err , not if the grid power in your area/country comes from hydro, nuclear or renewables.

Factless hype.

[LWATCDR]

"Less than half as carbon intensive as grid-power".
Unless you get your power from hydro-electric or nuclear.
Less than half as carbon intensive as coal, oil fired, or natural-gas? Or is taking the US grid as a whole?
Please try and give more than hype.
This may be great power system but I would like a little more in the way of facts in the summary.

The story source

[trawg]

... and, here's a link to the story source - at least they referenced it in the article, but essentially its a rewrite of the treehugger item submitted as blogspam.

While I'm whining, is there a template for stories about huge technological advances in energy production? Like "A startup has developed a new form of [insert name of your favourite green energy production system here]. It takes the existing process of [current way to produce power] and optimises it by [super high level technical details of magical new system], resulting in an efficiency improvement of [insert random number greater than 1 here, without citing details about how it was measured or what the costs of the new procedure are]. Read more about it on [insert link to your blog].

Not twice as efficient as generators ... can't be

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_cycle

The thermal efficiency of a combined cycle power plant is the net power output of the plant divided by the heating value of the fuel. If the plant produces only electricity, efficiencies of up to 59% can be achieved. In the case of combined heat and power generation, the efficiency can increase to 85%.

Given the figures cited above, it is impossible for fuel cells to be twice as efficient as modern power stations. That would mean they could get 118% efficiency.

The other issue is global warming and greenhouse gases. At a large power plant, it is feasible to sequester carbon dioxide. That wouldn't work with a zillion small fuel cells scattered around the country. These fuel cells aren't an environmental panacea and may not even be that good for the environment unless their only fuel is hydrogen.

Re:Somewhat offtopic but

[WaZiX]

What a dumb point against Nuclear energy.

1) How much of the concrete production comes from building Nuclear powerplants?

2) Electricity Generation is a bigger culprit, so going nuclear (I've been watching Heroes too much) would go in the right direction...

3) Transportation is also a (much) bigger culprit, and electricity will probably end up playing a large role in alternatives to fossilized carbon.

So, the first point isn't really a point, and nuclear energy could save much on the 2 biggest culprits...

Anything else?

Re:The Product Page

[Aladrin]

Your assumption about the price of gasoline doubling... I think that's pretty much a given. We -know- there's a limited amount of fuel in the world. We think we know about how much. We know we use more every year than the previous year.

At some point, gasoline is going to be too expensive to use as common fuel. It maybe in 10 years, like they've predicted for the last 15 or 20 years, or it maybe in in 30 or 40... But I expect to live that long. If the price hasn't doubled again in the next 10 years, I'll be very surprised.

You said 'lifetime', and I assume you meant yours. But let's assume you meant 'lifetime of the generator', because they won't last forever. At current prices, it definitely makes sense to buy the gas generator, as it's unlikely they'll both last more than 10 or 15 years.

But the price of a brand new product is always inflated to make back R&D costs quickly, then drops for sale to the less affluent folk in the world. Better production technology helps bring the cost down, too. I seriously doubt the hardware itself actually costs $175k... At a guess, let's say it comes down to 1/100th of that, $17.5k... It won't be long until it's a lot cheaper than the gas version.

In short, comparing the price of a newly-announced product to the price of a product that's been common for years doesn't work well in the long run.

I definitely agree with the 'screw over opec/etc', though... Even if it costs more, many people will be willing to adopt it for just that purpose.

The devil is in the details. IOW, fuggetaboutit

[Ancient_Hacker]

There are a lot of caveats in any use of fuel cells: * A lot of fuel cells work just fine in the lab. Where you have several PhD's carefully tweaking up the chemical inputs over a period of hours or days. Where they hourly titrate the input chemicals to ensure they're at 99.99% purity. Where the cell is maintained with 843 degrees C on the cathode side, -177C on the anode side, maintained plus or minus 0.05 degree C thanks to the half-dozen HP $4,000 quartz resonator thermometers. Where the load is constant non-inductive fixed-value pure resistor. Where it sits on a marble lab bench with no vibration. Where it doesnt matter if a layer of micro bubbles of liquid plutonium forms on the cathode, as your PHD with the least senority can be mandated to start through a stereo microscope and scrape that gunk off with a nano-curette. Then consider the operating environment for your typical car engine. Compare and Contrast. Hand in by the end of the hour. Points for neatness.

Re:The Product Page

[Rei]

We -know- there's a limited amount of fuel in the world.

Then you *know* wrong. Worst case, we can make petroleum from carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide plus water and energy, via Fisher-Tropsh or Sabatier synthesis. You require that there be a concept of "peak energy", not "peak oil", which is something that few are arguing for. Technically, sure, there will be peak energy eventually. There's a few hundred years of coal in known reserves (coal exploration hasn't been done all that widely since reserves are so well known, but power usage will continue to grow). If you consider the use of breeder reactors, thorium, and seawater fuel extraction, at current energy consumption there's ~10k years of nuclear fuel at current consumption rates (hard to predict how our usage needs will be that far out). Deuterium-based fusion (we sure have a long time to get it right...), hundreds of thousands to millions of years at current rates. Solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and proton-proton fusion, billions of years.

Of course, you don't have to resort to using H2O as your hydrogen feedstock for Fischer-Tropsh or Sabatier synthesis as long as we have coal for coal liquifaction, tar sands, methane hydrates/clathrates, TDP, possibly shale, biofuels for replacements, and so on. Many of these are nasty for the environment, but that doesn't change the fact that they are indeed fuel options.

What's currently running out is cheap light natural sweet crude. That's all. The era of $1/gal gasoline is over. Welcome to the era of $2-4/gal gasoline.