Bloom Energy Promises Cheap, Emissions-Free Power From a Small Box

unfortunately i do see this going in the same direction as the Segway. its sad... real sad. ♣

I think this is an awesome concept but what does it emit? If you're combining oxygen and a fuel source there has to be a byproduct. I'm just curious cause it would make sense for it to be CO2 and H2O if it was a combustion rxn but you can't get electricity out of combustion so whats up?

Hopefully we learn more about this tech once they launch. It's interesting and some big names are using and endorsing it. I hope he succeeds.

It still requires gas? We need to stop depending on gas. Nuclear energy is the way to go. (;

nuclear energy is fine as long as we find something to do with all the dangerous waste, natural gas pollutes the air and nuclear waste pollutes the ground, and the both pollute the water. think about it people we have a star, that's 8 light minutes away, not only is it constantly spewing out charged particles at a constant rate but the energy hitting earth which is about 1% of the total energy the sun makes every second is enough to power our world and our children's world and even our children's- children's world. that seems like a pretty good energy source right? so why don't we figure out how to harness that at least for the short term then figure out what to do about fusion, natural gas, biofuels and everything else like that.

If fossil fuels go in, which all contain a lot of carbon, then carbon has to come out. If oxygen goes in, then it has to come out too.

I'm wagering on carbon dioxide coming out. I don't see how energy can come out if carbon and oxygen go in but carbon dioxide doesn't come out. It seems to be violating laws of physics that are considered immutable.

On top of all that, there is this odd kind of secretiveness. We don't hear Nothing, we hear Something - Something that isn't very helpful to anyone except those receiving millions, or billions, of dollars of other people's money in investments. And that isn't you or me.

Fuel cells running on pure hydrogen are pollution free,producing heat and pure water as byproducts. Natural gas powered cells would have some form of carbon left over after the hydrogen in the gas is reacted with O2,ideally it would be carbon black (pure elemental carbon).Otherwise,a scrubber might be fitted to absorb CO2 produced.Cells running with biogas would be carbon neutral,as they would be returning carbon to the ecosystem from whence it came.

Energy... in all its forms, is big business making big bucks for big corporations. They have the world by the short hairs and it is hard to imagine that they would allow this situation to be changed merely to benefit humanity.

Interesting product. The good side is that fuel cells are a lot more efficient than combustion engines at processing energy in fuel. But the down side is that it always releases carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the atmosphere.

Large scale use of this might lead to even more problems with global warming.

And while Hydrogen is pollutant free, pure hydrogen needed for this reaction reacts very easy with Oxygen and doesn't exist in that form on Earth. So Chemically we have to spend just as much energy generating the Hydrogen from Water as it releases by burning it (Subject to fuel cell efficiency). So Hydrogen powered fuel cells is not really a solution for our energy problems either.

Lot of negativity around here....

Co2 we are producing it any way,The difference here is efficiency and cleanliness...

Until LHC give as some clues to go Thermo Nuclear(off coarse that's why they have invested so much in that apart from super weapons)..we have to look into ways of producing clean energy(that to directly in its pure form i.e electric) efficiently...

frog.You're prob right..I've been feeling the vibe. But negativity borders the same line reasoning does. Which philosopher was it that said to question everything? Descartes?

I also don't see a problem with CO2 emissions provided it is not expelled into a space with low air flow, I have a problem if it produces CO.

I thought the LHC was here to prove we can protect equipment from birds armed with bread for a few billion dollars.

So they have developed a device that turns hydrocarbons into heat and electricity. A very expensive device...

Why am I not thrilled?

Where's the beef?

Good yield? Why don't they show any numbers?

@Meshca"I thought the LHC was here to prove we can protect equipment from birds armed with bread for a few billion dollars."

You nailed it... :D

The maximum wastage of electricity is in transporting it thru the grid..
In that way i think this kind of tech is good in terms of saving...

No's they have provided in terms of dollars(i think that's what ultimately matters)
"And eBay's CEO told 60 Minutes that his company's five boxes have saved more than $100,000 in electricity costs over nine months. eBay's boxes run on bio-gas made from landfill trash."

Screw this crap.

The answer?

Thorium Nuclear Energy. Look it up.

I smell a dirty agenda. I was told when something sounds too good to be true, is most likely is. This company is far too secretive of how this product works. As long as the science-impaired masses keep believing this box is powered by magic (aka science), They buy into it 100%. I say it needs to be peer reviewed now before I take anyone of this seriously. 100 bucks says theres a rodent and hamster wheel inside that stupid box.

@dolbydigital2

No magic. It has a diesel genset inside the box. In goes the fuel, out comes electricity. Everybody is happy. As an bonus a nice package.

A dirty agenda? Unable to look inside the box?

Look at the video. The dude shows everything. I highly doubt the science he shows is magic. Besides, the guy isn't telling you how great it is himself, YOU are. The only time something is too good to be true is when the so called 'truth' isn't coming from you. :/

Hopefully most people can see the simplicity of the science here well enough to understand that it's not working off of magic. After all, before lightbulbs ended up in every home, if you told someone they could light their house at night - without a candle - they'd have laughed at you - until you showed them - and then, like you, they would simply run away in fear of such wicked evil magic.

I think it's a very good idea to embrace stuff rather than try to shoot it down. You lose nothing, and at the very least, you learn something even if you're mistaken. Fear gets you nowhere. If people continued to be afraid of the lightbulb, there would be no such thing as the computer in front of you because people would be afraid of electricity and all the evil 'magic' it could do.

People should give stuff a chance before they shoot it down or cower in fear of its potential evil.

Will the big power utilities squash this like big automotive tried to squash the electric car?

I call sorcery on this. As the media woman said there are no emissions and no combustion. Even a fuel cell produces emissions and performs combustion which is just the combination of fuel and oxygen. Obviously since the man is indian he has found a cache of djinn in the desert and enslaved them in his magical box. 60 minutes also obviously knew this so they cut him off after the question can it run on solar, yes and instant cutaway. Fuel cells do not run on solar. You can also tell from a gratuitous appearance of colin powell, they knew we would all be saying wtf does colin powell know about science, energy or much of anything else what is he even doing in this story distracting us from the poor djinns enslavement. Sorcery I say.

The only other option to sorcery is the media people aren't very good at knowing things and really should hire people who do know things, and leave the media people to stand in front of the camera and say the things that the people who actually know some things tell them to say. I think there might be less inaccuracies and confusion, and probably less ham handed and dim witted social engineering in the media then.

In the 60 minutes report, Sridhar suggested that utilities might want to buy these fuel cells and place that at substations. If his claims are to be believed, they make more electricity with less fuel than a large plant: with localized deployment you also have less loss to resistance. Also, If I recall correctly, a household would need a box that is somewhere between 1/32 and 1/16 the size of the individual units that Google, etc.. were buying. If the price is scalable, it does not look absurdly expensive on a household level.

I totally agree with Colin Powell, at the end of the 60 minutes piece. This is not "the" solution to powering our society. It is "a part" the transition to 0 emission power.

As with some of the other comments made previously, Nuclear Power is going to be the answer we are looking for but the security issues are the big concern, and the hold back for the governments to allow the private sector get into the nuclear game.

I have been watching the new tech that is coming out in the energy markt for a while and I think that having multible small producers along with Big producers maintaining the gird is the short term answer.

Lets face it we cant build small Nuclear reactors in our basments, nor would we want them.

There is very promissing stuff coming from the Magnetic pole stamping (Pop Mech, March 2010, Page 18) that coupled with Zero point moduels looks like it might lead to some good results. it has already been used for wind mills to reduce frition, so what else can it do. I find it interesting that all of these discoveries are coming from former NASA engineers............

I think that some of these guys need to try working together and we will see some good results.

As far as I can understand, the Bloom Box only converts thermal/chemical energy into electricity. Without specified efficiency and performance values, I presume it may be a little below of the efficiency of a hydrogen fuel cell, that is about 50%. Also, it needs to be fueled with natural gas or bio-gas, producing carbon dioxide (CO2). From this, I believe the aneutronic energy could be a better solution to power our energy needs, as it is neutron-free and carbon-free.
www.crossfirefusor.com/nuclear-fusion-reactor/overview.html

@rbrtwjohnson, you wouldn't happen to have a vested interest in aneutronic energy would you? It seems like every post i've ever seen you write is in reference to it. I'm a big advocate of ethanol but I don't find a way to drag it into every post I make...

Maybe he's posting in threads regarding alternative fuel/propulsion/energy sources?(and he kinda is) I see nothing wrong with that.

The question is how well this stack will put up with contamination... thus its lifespan, particularly with "biogas" which can have lots of nasty sulfur and nitrogen compounds along for the ride.

Otherwise, it looks like a nice system for applications which have very steady, very predictable load power needs like data centers. I'd like to see how well it responds to deep load changes, which has been a past issue with fuel cells. Going to be a bit tough to use in an off-grid residence unless this system can respond to the 4000:1 load change that occurs in a residence at 2am when the power load goes from 5W powering the clock radio and the cell phone charger to 20KW running the heat pump and the water heater.

T'is an Ill wind that blows no minds... Biogas generators can be very cheap, the biggest fuel resource in America goes down the crapper! The output from a home or small farm biogas producing digestor could easily fuel a Bloombox with methane. Yes, biogas does contain hydrogen sulfide, (easily removed with a "rust" filter) and carbon dioxide (try limewater). Imagine, finally all those otherwise useless pets have a function, through the amazing fuel source in their feces! Invite All the Inlaws! (they make poo) with your biogas digestor and a Bloom Box you can acheive the goal of Free Power! (once you pay off the Bloombox) I want one!

There are many benefits to Bloom's solid oxide fuel cell technology if it succeeds. The distributed nature of the device could help foster adoption of electric vehicle since it could help offload some of the stress on the national grid.

www.notpetroleum.com/2010/02/27/bloom-energy-and-the-electric-car/

Bloom's energy server can also help reduce the amount of fresh water used to generate electricity at centralized coal-fired plants especially for arid climates such as in the southwestern US.

www.drywelljournal.com/2010/03/06/bloom-energy-and-water-conservation/

I think it is important that we look at the big picture of the value of technologies such as this instead of just focusing on whether its claims of GHG reduction are accurate.

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I'm surprised this guy hasn't been found on the side of the road yet. Maybe the 60 minutes exposure was for protection. If this was a threat to the powers that be then they would send a sleeper cell into the plant that makes these devices and gum up the works so to speak. I don't think they have yet but wait and see. Remember what happened to GM when the Japanese hired goons to sabotage the our auto industry.

OKay the reason why this is a bad idea is because it is to much of an all solution people like the bigwig oil men and other energies are gonna whack the creator no doubt, he might wanna watch his back

Employing Bloom "boxes" instead of coal fire plants or the extremely expensive nuclear power plants will save money and cut carbon emissions by 50%. Until other systems come along, this one works. We should put it to use. Far more efficient than any existing technology.