The Bloom Box: An Energy Breakthrough
In the world of energy, the Holy Grail is a power source that's inexpensive and clean, with no emissions. Over 100 start-ups in Silicon Valley are working on it. One of them, Bloom Energy, is about to make public its invention: a little power-plant-in-a-box they want to put literally in your backyard. You'll generate your own electricity with the box and it'll be wireless. The idea is to one day replace the big power plants and transmission line grid.
K.R. Sridhar ... says he knows it works because he originally invented a similar device for NASA. He really is a rocket scientist. He invented a new kind of fuel cell, which is like a very skinny battery that always runs. Sridhar feeds oxygen to it on one side, and fuel on the other. The two combine within the cell to create a chemical reaction that produces electricity. There's no need for burning or combustion, and no need for power lines from an outside source. "It's cheaper than the grid, it's cleaner than the grid."
Twenty large, well-known companies have quietly bought and are testing Bloom boxes. The first customer was Google. Four units have been powering a Google datacenter for 18 months. They use natural gas, but half as much as would be required for a traditional power plant.
John Donahoe, eBay's CEO, says its five boxes were installed nine months ago and have already saved the company more than $100,000 in electricity costs. eBay's boxes run on bio-gas made from landfill waste, so they're carbon neutral. "In five to ten years, we would like to be in every home."
[Sridhar] said a unit should cost an average person less than $3,000.
Note: To watch the fascinating 60 Minutes video clip of this amazing invention, click here. For other CBS videos clips on the Bloom Box, click here. For astounding information on other clean, green, renewable energy sources and inventions, click here.
Re: The Bloom Box: An Energy Breakthrough
Great to see this old technology (fuel cell principle was discovered in 1838, according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell#History ) finally being put to use - especially when run on biogas, a renewable resource commonly made from waste material. This appears to be an advanced fuel cell design probably with modern electronics to turn the power into something usable by homes and industries. Calling it "wireless" is a bit misleading. It's essentially an electrochemical generator that runs on piped-in gas (natural, biogas or ?). Still, it's potentially a big improvement over grid-supplied electricity.
Re: The Bloom Box: An Energy Breakthrough
I wonder if it can be used with oil? If so, how cool would it be to use it in conjunction with this:
https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/plastic-to-oil-fantastic/
Re: The Bloom Box: An Energy Breakthrough
Thanks much for sharing this, leela8.
The Wikipedia article on fuel cells says: In addition to this pure hydrogen type, there are hydrocarbon fuels for fuel cells, including diesel, methanol (see: direct-methanol fuel cells and indirect methanol fuel cells) and chemical hydrides. The waste products with these types of fuel are carbon dioxide and water.
A solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) is extremely advantageous “because of a possibility of using a wide variety of fuel”.[12] Unlike most other fuel cells which only use hydrogen, SOFCs can run on hydrogen, butane, methanol, and other petroleum products. The different fuels each have their own chemistry.
_______________________________________________-
The plastic-to-oil machine looks very interesting. It would seem most preferable though to use it only with waste plastic that cannot be recycled into other materials.
Re: The Bloom Box: An Energy Breakthrough
On re-wathcing the plastic-to-oil video, I see the plastic is converted to gas first. It would be so cool if that man could work with Shidhar, and configure a machine to work in concert with a Bloombox (at the home-user level) that would convert household waste plastic to propane for use in its fuel cell.
I hear your intention with the plastics; however I think the point here is that between collection, transportation and processing, more fuel is used, and toxins released, in the recycling of plastics into new plastics, than would be used in a machine like this. Of course it does not address the fact that fossil fuel is needed to create plastics in the first place, which we will eventually run out of; but there are so many uses for plastic that I fear it is here to stay, at least for a while. If these machines (both) became cheap enough for indiviiduals to have...imagine the possibilities!
Re: The Bloom Box: An Energy Breakthrough
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by leela8:
Why is it that any charlatan with enough money for a fancy website can con the whole world if he just uses the three magic words PLASTIC-ENERGY-OIL.
What idiotic nonsense this is - I hesitate to dignify it with the word "claim". It doesn't even rise to that level. Did you know that I can change WASTE PLASTIC into LOAVES AND FISHES and CURE THE FOOD PROBLEM. Yeah, I've got a website to prove it. Go to www.uranidiot.net and lap it all up.
Doesn't it occur to any one here how utterly trivial this all is? Heat up plastic? Till it does what. Char and smoke and turn into carbon and various noxious gases? Wow, what a breakthrough! No one ever thought of this deep chemical treatment before did they? Do you know what happens with a similar material, called wood? You've all seen it. Haven't you all sat around a fire on the beach and watched all of the pure, unused oil running down onto the sand? Can anyone just tell you anything at all and garner your credulous belief? Don't you think there should be a little more to show than some dead obvious distillation glassware that anyone can put together in ten minutes with standard glassware? How about some numbers? Aren't they needed anymore? How about some chemical equations? Anything else missing? How about some actual report in some scientific literature if this is such a g-dmn innovation?
There is one of these frauds published on the internet every week. There is a well-funded fraud as bad as this one every six months or a year. There are perpetual motion machines by the score. The patent office won't even patent a perpetual motion machine anymore. It's about time that the patent office stopped published magical garbage to oil machines too.
Wake up people! There are no magic wands? Hobbits are imaginary! There isn't even a god like the x-tians want you to believe. Prayer is useless. There are more horse's asses in the world than there are horses and lots of them are publishing on the internet. And if you believe everything you are told without any evidence then people will take delight in telling you more and more just to have their fun.
The way to solve the problems with excess plastic takes thought and some hard work. I solve these problems every day and publish the answers on my website at www.zerowasteinstitute.org but when some Wizard of Oz comes along everyone wants to jump on that because thinking is just too damned hard. When is zero waste analysis going to go viral?
If you want to learn about the grandaddy of such frauds, take a look at: https://www.mindfully.org/Technology...lmer9apr05.htm and follow it up more recently. He is having such a good run with unsuspecting dopes that he is still somehow pulling in financial support after many years. Snake oil never dies.
