Anyone who is into alternate forms of energy might find the following of some interest:
I asked an academic friend what his thoughts were of the "bloom box":
Well I know that it works just fine. How cost effective it is and how robust
it turns out to be is yet to be determined. The output from the fuel cells
is water and CO2. The efficiency looks reasonable compared to most other
fuel cell technologies, however it still requires natural gas as a feed
stock as well as consuming O2 from the air. There should not be a problem
with the formation of nitrogen oxides as the temperatures involved are not
very high at all. I have no idea what this system's 'energy density' is
however it looks on the face of it to be reasonably light compared to other
similar systems and it seems pretty energy efficient although I have no idea
what it's energy conversion efficiencies are. If it's up over 50% efficient
then it is probably a viable system.
Not a bad fix for energy independent buildings including homes as long as
there is a plentiful supply of natural gas at reasonable cost. IT could even
power mobile systems such as cars but range will be limited if you have to
depend on compressed natural gas. Better ranges will be possible for LPG and
there is already infrastructural experience in LPG distribution systems.
Even said it should improve the range of all electric vehicles to more
realistic ranges.
A fuel cell technology appears to be an intermediary step between current
electricity storage systems such as batteries and energy efficient
electricity generation systems. Fuel cells are a transitory technology.
I'm still waiting for real energy independent technologies. Cold fusion is
now accepted as being real but its commercial development is still lagging
for want of investment capital. Even hot fusion has finally progressed a
little but it's a very exotic and difficult technology and is probably only
suitable for large generation complexes and there is still the problem of
needing a grid to get the resulting electricity to where it is used.
There are quite a few cold fusion technologies about but 'Black Light' is
probably the most commercially viable just now. They are supposed to be
having some great 'unveiling' later this month for some commercial units.
There is still some way to go before we get a real version of ' Mr. Fusion'
power cells of 'Back to the Future movie fame' but we are getting there
slowly.
