OT: The Bloom Box

Joe Hebert

Did anyone catch the 60 Minutes segment tonight about a new energy breakthrough called the Bloom Box?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/18/60minutes/main6221135.shtml

Their web site doesn?t give you much to go on other than something is going to happen in 2 days and 15 hours from now:

http://bloomenergy.com/

It?s difficult to know what to believe or not to believe these days but I?m intrigued enough to want to hear more about it.

Any comments?

Hedberg

The TV report was very short on explanations. Best I can figure, you can feed the thing natural gas and oxygen and get about twice as much electricity out of it as you can get by using natural gas in a power plant to produce electricity. There has to be some sort of chemical reaction going on and the device has to have waste -- my guess is you get CO2 and H20 out. Apparently, methane produced from composting, or whatever, can also be used as fuel.

It's all very interesting and exciting, and it may provide technology to allow the US to better utilize our vast natural gas resources but I doubt that the technology will contribute significantly in the near future. Maybe 50 to 100 years, but I doubt 10 to 20. But then, I don't actually know anything.

Joe Hebert

The video that is linked to the page I posted up top is now playing the entire 13 minute report and not just the 1 minute or so trailer that was playing originally.

The fuel cell construction starts with ocean beach sand which is baked into a ceramic tile and then each side of the ceramic is coated with some secret formula green and black inks.

Oxygen is fed into one side of the cell and a fuel (e.g. natural gas) is fed into the other side of the cell. A chemical reaction within the cell produces electricity as the output. I don?t remember anything being mentioned about waste but it did say the footprint is a fraction of solar panels.

The fuel cell is made with cheap materials and this guy wants to be in everyone?s home in 5 to 10 years for under $3000.00 per household.

I have no idea if this thing is for real and what if any the downsides are but it I?ll be interested to see what kind of money exchanges hands when the Bloom Box is officially launched in a couple of days.

I suppose I should hold my breath since this box consumes oxygen...

DHawthorne

There are so many of these types of things that are outright hoaxes, it's hard to say. The fact that it gets media coverage means nothing at all; just the other day I saw a clip from an Australian news network showcasing a generator that you supposedly started up with a battery, then it ran by itself for 4-5 years generating power. I understand that they are journalists, not physicists, but come on, at least hire someone with half a brain to vet these things.

This one at least isn't completely impossible from the get go, since it isn't getting something from nothing, just getting something more efficiently. The real question is "how much more efficient is it really?". The inventors hype the stuff, and the media runs with the hype in a completely irresponsible fashion. It's gotten impossible to know the truth anymore until it's been out there enough for a lot of impartial evaluation. It's the secret formula part that bothers me; that's a huge red flag. Go out and get your patent, then you don't need to keep it secret. Secret, to me, means you are trying to hide something you would rather we didn't discover about your "breakthrough."

Hedberg

It's probably not a hoax as, according to the report, there are some systems deployed including one at Google. If I recall correctly, the Google installation uses some source of "young" methane -- essentially waste gas.

DHawthorne

Here's a pretty balanced review: http://www.dailytech.com/Is+the+Magic+Alternative+Energy+Bloom+Box+for+Real/article17752.htm . It would seem it's not pure snake oil, though there is definitely some hype. The question now is whether they can get the cost down and if there are any long-term "gotchas."

Hedberg

Something else mentioned in the 60 Minutes report is that these "boxes" are currently eligible for about 50% subsidy from the feds and from "cahl ee forn ee yeah" combined. Within the last year we've seen a great decrease in the viability of "bio-diesel" because of a diminution in government subsidies that were running about $1.00/gallon. I wonder how much government subsidy is assumed in the five to ten year projection?

The daily tech article also notes that CO2 is produced as waste. No surprise. If you go in with NG/methane, which is a compound of carbon and hydrogen and nothing else, and oxygen and a chemical reaction ensues, the only things coming out are going to be carbon-oxygen and hydrogen-oxygen compounds. That is, CO2 and H2O, for the most part.

The claim made on 60 Minutes is that you would get about twice as much electricity from these things using NG as a fuel source as you would from a traditional NG fired electricity generating plant. I assume, but don't know for sure, that a significant portion of that savings is as a result of the minimization of transmission losses -- by generating electricity on site you don't have to send it long distance via wires, transformer stations, etc. Everything about the transmission of electricity imposes costs, so you will minimize those losses/costs. That's a good thing. A significant decrease in the amount of NG needed to create a kw-hour -- that's a good thing.

But, only about 60 to 70 million American homes currently have natural gas hooked up. So, you've got maybe 50% or more of American homes to get connected up to a fuel source. Some of these would be easy, but a lot would require significant investment in infrastucture. Then there is the question of whether or not the current natural gas infrastructure (interstate pipelines, etc) can handle the increase in NG use that would result as all the coal fired electrical generating plants are replaced.

You can see why someone might be inclined to think a tad longer than five to ten years to make a significant impact.