Feb
25
The Exploding Bloom Box
February 25, 2010 | 1 Comment
With much coordinated anticipation Bloom Energy revealed their Bloom Box (BB) fuel cell to the press yesterday. With working units sold and operating on sites in California naysaying has to be a real hard task.
There are articles and blogs rich in interesting details and after an hour or so of looking through them I encourage [...]
Feb
23
Bloom Fuel Cell Booms Tomorrow
February 23, 2010 | 2 Comments
With a setup blitz of media coverage from Fortune and Business Week in the business section to CBS on the political left and much of the green crowd in between, Bloom Energy and their “fuel cell” or very close approximation of one is having a media event Wednesday February 24th, 2010. That’s when some answers [...]
Jan
11
A Look At The Only Fuel Cell On The Market
January 11, 2010 | 1 Comment
Toshiba of Japan has been a leader in fuel cells and last October quietly put a methanol fuel cell on the market. Japan is well known for introducing leading technologies into their home market, so this isn’t s shock. But it certainly is a shot across the bow of every other fuel cell market ‘want [...]
Oct
29
Developing a Cooler Fuel Cell
October 29, 2009 | 2 Comments
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Basic Energy Science Catalysis Science Program is supporting solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) development. The SOFCs use an electrochemical process to produce electricity by oxidizing a fuel. As the name implies, SOFCs use a ceramic electrolyte, a material known as yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ).
But the material has three significant drawbacks: because [...]
Oct
28
Fuel Cell Progress – A Better Way to Burn
October 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Oxidizing fuels is problematic because combustion is so inefficient at producing usable energy. For example, when gasoline is used to power a vehicle, at least 80 percent of the energy produced is wasted as heat. That’s reversed with vehicles that run on electricity. Better than 80 percent of the energy supplied to the vehicle is [...]
Oct
15
“Prize” Money For Fuel Cells
October 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Last Friday saw The Carbon Trust in the U.K. announce they are going to offer “prizes” or more appropriately investments into three novel ideas with up to up to £1 million per project to further develop and prove them. If any one of those demonstrates its potential for lower cost fuel cell systems, the Carbon [...]
Oct
6
Electricity Directly From Sugar
October 6, 2009 | 2 Comments
Brigham Young University researchers have developed a fuel cell, the type as a battery with a fuel tank – that harvests electricity from the carbohydrates of glucose and other sugars. Glucose one might note is one of the human body’s preferred fuels.
BYU chemistry professor Gerald Watt says, “Carbohydrates are very energy rich. What we needed [...]
May
29
Now a Self Healing Seal for Fuel Cells
May 29, 2009 | 1 Comment
Solid oxide fuel cells have a problem; the integrity of the seals within and between the power-producing units tends to fail. The stack materials run at high temperatures in some designs as high as 1000 degrees centigrade (1,800 F). Keeping the fuel separated is critical as a fuel leak into the oxygen side can cause [...]
May
20
A New Fuel Cell Catalyst Breakthrough
May 20, 2009 | 1 Comment
Younan Xia, Ph.D., the James M. McKelvey Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis led a team of scientists at WUSTL and the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the development of a bimetallic fuel cell catalyst made of a palladium core that acts as a “seed” that supports growth of dendritic platinum branches [...]
Jan
28
A New Catalyst For Ethanol Fuel Cells
January 28, 2009 | 2 Comments
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, collaborating with researchers from the University of Delaware and Yeshiva University, have developed a new catalyst that could make ethanol-powered fuel cells feasible. The highly efficient catalyst performs two crucial, and previously unreachable steps needed to oxidize ethanol and produce clean energy in fuel cell [...]
