Bloom 'Box' Energy Server hands-on (literally) with video!
By Ross Miller 
posted February 24th 2010 5:18PM
posted February 24th 2010 5:18PM
posted February 24th 2010 5:18PM
A look back on popular stories from today in a specific year.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
Well, does this alleviate fears of overheating, or is there something I am missing when they say these things run quite cool?
@r34p3r
Seems that way... I read people talking about these things being extremely hot and therefore deteriorating quickly if not running constantly (going from hot to cold etc...). I don't know anything about the technology but considering this post I'd say neither do they!
@r34p3r
"The major thing about an SOFC versus other fuel cells is that the material composition means they can run crazy hot—up to 1800ºF, says the US Department of Energy—and have to, since the ceramic materials don't become active until they reach a certain temperature. "
Quote stolen from elsewhere.
@xnowimcoolx It's absurd to think that the exterior of these things would be near the internal operating temperature. There's this stuff called insulation... I don't doubt Bloom has some intelligent scientists and engineers, but I do have my doubts about some of the commenters on engadget. The issue is the internal materials expanding and contracting when the device is turned on or off and temperatures go from ambient to hundreds of degrees C... SOFCs typically like to run at fairly steady state. That is an issue for temperature cycling, and also needs to be considered for variable load in a home. The comment about requiring grid power or some kind of complementary source is a good one... fuel cells of any kind don't really like to be throttled like an engine, and you don't want to be heating a giant resistor in your backyard at night time when the house electricity demand is low.
Since these things are so very hot inside, perhaps that heat can be used to heat the house during the winter.
@Chief2 if i could put in my $0.02... the engine manifold of my car does this a few times a day... and not that i have a fascination for cars or anything or an affinity for older cars, but my car is from 1992 and it's engine is still going strong with the original manifold. Granted it was taken care of, but nowhere near as pampered as these bloom boxes would be during their lifetimes... so forgive me if I'm not as panicked about heat expansion problems due to the actual metallurgy slash composition. I'd say that design problems would be an initial culprit.. and with design modifications over the years this technology should mature quite well... again this is just going on similar issues in the automotive industry which seems to have been quite well dealt with over the decades since computer aided design started helping carmakers design better built engines etc. etc. Good luck to them! Looks promising.
@r34p3r Perhaps it overheats depending on the type of fuel you are using? From what I seen from the video I posted about Bloombox on my blog; I believe more than one fuel such as natural gas can be used.
http://hight3ch.com/bloom-energy-how-does-the-bloombox-work-is-it-free-energy/
@r34p3r This type of product is already being built for the home, it is the size of a standard dishwasher, have a look http://www.cfcl.com.au/BlueGen/ and they claim 60% efficiency. Sounds exciting!!! Might buy some shares in this!
@r34p3r
Thanks for coming out with all this lack of misinformation Bloom Box. So what is your product? So far with the information on ceramic disks and use of a fuel it appears to be just another CHP fuel cell project, which is being worked on by another few dozen other companies, with several already with commercial releases.
@jimlivingston
Good point, because that is how these CHP fuel cells work. The efficiency stated is not the fuel-to-electricity ratio but the fuel-to-energy ratio, as the majority of energy released by the fuel cells is waste heat, which can instead be used for heating.
And they keep on going on about the miniature size of these units, yet that 100kW unit above looks roughly 30 times larger than the 25kW generators I work with.
Anybody know some real facts about this technology? Or are these guys just harvesting for investors?
I wish Engadget would use a different video service to host their videos... The embedded viddler box never loads completely, but it does on failblog and viddlers main site for engadgets videos... PLEASE SWITCH or tell me how to fix this... =.=
@r34p3r
Heat implies inefficiency. Example: Internal Combustion Engine. The cooler your engine can run once up to operating heat, but better. In a given amount of Gasoline there is a finite amount of energy. The more of it that is transferred into heat, the less your car is able to use (Generally Speaking**)
@Chief2
The company claims they can be rolled out to homes but I share your concerns that they will not suit variable load applications (such as a residential home).
There are significant safety concerns with other forms of green energy like solar (some panels can become faulty and start arcing and making roofs electrified). These devices would carry their own set of safety concerns.
I think they would be better purchased by the power companies and rolled out at substations. This would allow for a win-win situation with customers and the supplier in terms of energy prices and safety.
@Chief2 "there's this stuff called insulation".
And there's this thing called thermal transfer. The heat has to go somewhere and I suspect there's no thermal conduits stuck in the ground to take it away. So, even though there's insulation, that heat will saturate it, increase it's temp and eventually pass through to heat the casing/air beyond.
@strommsarnac You don't want the heat to go away. SOFCs require very high operating temperatures. The heat is not exclusively a byproduct of reaction inefficiency, it is an operating requirement. You assume that you start up an SOFC and it heats up to 800 degrees, but that's incorrect. You heat the SOFC to 800 degrees, THEN it starts up. My point around insulation is that you isolate the SOFC from the external chassis so the giant boxes don't glow and melt themselves into the ground.
@buoy Metallurgy applies to metals. Your engine manifold is not made of zirconia. The bloom membrane is. No offense, but you can't say something looks promising if you don't know what you're looking at.
whoa... dude...
I desperately want to believe that they'll actually manage to meet their goal of home-sized stacks for $3000... it would be completely amazing to be able to power my own home using a combination of solar and natural gas.
@erwos
hehheh.
you said beans.
I want one. For 3000$/home I think these boxes will be a bestseller.
Is the price per kwh less than or equal that of coal, nuclear, hydro and so on? If not....Keep trying.
@nastro It is meant to be "up to" half the price of those excluding the initial investment of the Bloom Box/Server so over time, yes, cheaper. Plus as Solar (and other green energy) improves efficiency you'll be able to use less non-renewable sources. This really is (potentially) a product for 10/15/20 years down the line for a man on the (probably nice) street, non-TNC/local TV stations (?!) need not apply now.
@d0mth0ma5
Meant to be doesnt mean a damn thing.
You need to look up the myth of green energy.
@nastro Well, one of the slides show that it is twice as efficient than the gird, so I assume IF (which is a big if) the natural gas you get to your house costs less than twice as much as the power station pays, then it could easily be cheaper.
That's without you taking into account its ability to convert the waste product back into fuel by using electricity, making a bit like a big battery for your solar panels etc. In that respect it could help in making energy a whole lot cheaper, as storing energy from renewables is one of the biggest issues.
@nastro I'm not referring to Ethanol or "Clean" Coal AKA ways to get subsidies, i'm talking about Solar, Wind (especially the cylindrical turbine that the Chinese, I think, were building), Tidal Energy turbines, Hydro-electirc, Geo-thermal. Unless you can show me otherwise, the only emissions these sources put out occur during the production/transportation of the equipment and if they last for a sufficiently long period of time then that Carbon cost will be massively reduced per KW-hr.
@nastro
Oh, I get it. It looked like you were asking a question, but you were really trying to make a statement.
#iseewhatyoudidthere
I have no understanding of energy technologies but the fact that subsiies were needed to encourage adoption indicate higher market cost.
I'm still hopeful but there seems to be a complete dead end to cost efficient clean technologies.
@JohnMKeynes Traditional power sources: Coal, Nuclear, Oil ,etc. all receive subsidies as well. The only difference is that you will see these first hand when purchasing the unit rather than all of it happening at federal and state levels.
It still remains to be seen if they can maintain $3000 for residential use but as more units are produced cost will eventually come down.
@JohnMKeynes
Yeah, I know... Humans have been looking into this for about 0.01% of their time on this earth and they still haven't found a solution to cheap clean energy. It is clearly a dead end.
I mean... It's not like they're making any progress.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/PVeff%28rev110707%29d.png
This thing is just too unreal to believe.
@mattscinto
"If it's too good to be true, it probably is.."
I'll have to agree with you... as promising as it sounds, think I would still wait about 4-5 years before picking one of my own at.... Walmart??
Al Gore need one.
I for one would like to know the average cost (for fuel) of running a home-sized model for a day. How much fuel will it take, and will I have to go running out to my Energy Server every hour to "top off the tank"?
@Esteban Jobs: The idea is that you'd pipe natural gas into it, I believe.
@erwos Correct - it would be plumbed into your natural gas just like a water heater. The label on the 5th pic says it maxes out at 125 ft^3/hour, and the official site says it uses 0.661 MMBtu/hr - somebody else can do the math on that one.
@erwos
I'm sure many people would do just that, but part of the appeal of this device is the claim that it can use any fuel source. I personally don't have natural gas pipes in my neighborhood. Everything is electric. So what would a person like me do in this situation? I would either have to pay the gas company a huge amount of money to get gas lines in our neighborhood, or there would need to be some kind of fuel reservoir attached to the Bloom Server.
So my inquiry remains: How much fuel would it consume per day/month/year? Also, is it just as efficient running on gasoline or ethanol instead of natural gas?
@Esteban Jobs
Propane Gas is what you would use.
I am in the same boat, no natural gas lines here only electric & woodburning stoves for heat.
If they can build one for $3k and the running cost via propane is low per year, like one tank a year for me to justify the cost. My PG&E bill runs just $40-60 a month so the yearly cost would have to be about te same. A little highter would be fine if it produced the power output to run my houses 'large' Heater/AC unit, then I can stop using my dirty woodstove for heat in the winter, then cool my whole house, not just my bedroom with a protable AC unit, in the summer.
@Esteban Jobs
This math is no good, those ratings must not be comparable. Because if the box took in 125 cu ft of gas per hour, that'd be 1.25 therms, or 125,000 BTUs (36.6kWh) worth of energy. If it then produced 661,000 BTU of power per hour (193.75kWh) it would be running at about 528% efficiency, which is impossible.
@spin cycle
The website says that it uses .661 MMBTU (661,000) BTUS per hour to produce the rated power. The rated power on the datasheet they published is 100 kilowatts. Given that the input is equivalent to 193 kilowatts, this thing is running at 52% efficiency. 93 kilowatts is being expended as heat by-product.
Anyways, I was hoping they would of produced modules that would fit in a car rather than this. 52% efficiency is a lot better than ICEs.
@Esteban Jobs
The 60 minutes interview said it can also be powered by solar. The 60 minutes segments can be found on youtube.
@wenuell
The 60 Minutes article said they thought you could use solar energy to break water into hydrogen and oxygen, then put it in this and get power back from it. That makes it a way to store solar energy, not produce energy. It cannot be fed from solar energy as a fuel.
nate:
that math at least produces a plausible number, but the box is clearly marked as taking at max 125 cu ft of gas an hour, which is only 125,000 BTU.
http://www.engadget.com/photos/bloom-box-energy-server-hands-on/#2739666
So even though this is a plausible efficiency figure, I can't see how it is correct either.
@nate345
I ran the same maths... Considering the efficiency of the whole system (ie removing the loss from grid transmission) it works out well, considering that traditional gas burning power stations get similar levels of efficiency. However the amount of CO2 these things release directly is not insignificant: they quote 773lb/MWh, which is still 68% less than the average for a gas powered station (1135lb/MWh). I guess if you could feed it with pure hydrogen it wouldn't have any CO2/CO at all...
@spin cycle
I also ran the calcs but got slightly different value. Are you sure you're making the distinction that the pressure is 15 PSIG (not 15 PSIA).
Even still, I'm getting around 87kW (296707 BTU/hr) of energy in CNG at that rate of flow and pressure. That still doesn't comply with the claimed 100kW output (lol 115% efficient).
My values used
125ft^3/hr (.00983 m^3/s) claimed input rate
1.65kg/m^3 Approx density of CNG at 29.7PSIA (15PSIG + ATM)
53600000 J/kg Specific energy of Natural Gas
Saw this on 60 minutes, looks promising.
So I don't quite get it and maybe someone can explain. This hooks up to your gas or oil line and makes / stores electricity.
Is that right?
If so, there must be waste products left over from the process. Where do they go? Am I missing the point?
@renretamid
I believe the only byproduct of fuel cell is water, in vapor form.
@Jimmijam You're thinking PEM fuel cells, using pure hydrogen and oxygen. Bloom uses a solid oxide fuel cell coupled with a reformer that converts natural gas (methane) to hydrogen. The reformer produces CO2, and some water is also produced.
@renretamid
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10457410-54.html?tag=mncol;txt
Here's a link to the 60 Minutes piece. It runs on gas - normally natural gas; but Google is using a carbon-neutral biofuel. Most companies/homes would just hook it up to their natural gas pipe and away it goes.
@renretamid
The basic idea AFAIK: Bloom Boxes can use regular hydrocarbon fuels; they can convert the energy in the energy source into electricity more efficiently than by fuel combustion; they don't locally produce harmful pollutants which would be produced by hydrocarbon combustion. Other than fuel, the only other requirement is atmospheric oxygen. So, mainly, it is inherently more efficient and cleaner than burning fossil fuels to generate electricity. The fact that it can use widely available fossil fuels makes the Bloom Box more competitive than if it required a more expensive source of fuel and can fit into existing energy infrastructure more easily.
If the source of fuel is natural gas and there is a natural gas pipeline system in place, then the only source of dangerous pollutants is due to the initial processing of the natural gas. If the fuel were diesel, for instance, like in an undeveloped nation where there is no natural gas pipeline, one would have to refine oil into diesel and transport the diesel to the Bloom Box.
@kilgary
well chemistry doesn't change it isn't magic. If it uses Natural Gas or Propane then it burns mostly Methane which is CH4. It has to have CO2 and H2O as byproducts.
I don't know what biofuel would be used which is carbon neutral except alcohol. If it used that then the byproduct could be only water. Their claims of no emissions must be made on using the biofuel alcohol.
@wls
carbon neutral != no emissions
This seems awesome, but I am sure like all the other technologies that we have seen that try to solve the energy issues this one too will have draw backs. I have started a pros and cons list about it. Let me know you thoughts http://www.proconlists.com/list/technology-science/bloom-energy-fuel-cells/6