New fuel cell can supply 70% of (Japanese) household demand

[kristopher]

New fuel cell can supply 70% of household demand

...JX Nippon Oil & Energy Corporation says the home-use device is 10 percent more energy efficient than conventional models.

The device produces electricity and hot water through a chemical reaction with hydrogen and oxygen. It will sell at around 35,000 dollars in October.

Critics say such systems don't work during power failures, a drawback revealed during the March 11th disaster.

President Yasushi Kimura says his company plans to solve that problem by selling the product with a storage battery system that keeps working even during blackouts, as early as next summer.

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/15_35.html

[Cool Logic]

1. "Critics say such systems don't work during power failures,"

You have pity someone who is has a glass that is perpetually half-way empty.

[drm604]

2. What's the source of the hydrogen?

How is this more efficient than just directly using whatever energy source was used to generate the hydrogen?

[OKIsItJustMe]

5. Go back and reread

It uses natural gas. The Japanese have been using these for a few years now.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23451723/ns/us_news-environment/t/fuel-cells-home-japan-big-idea/

…

Developers say fuel cells that use natural gas to get hydrogen produce one-third less of the pollution that causes global warming than conventional electricity generation does

…

[drm604]

6. Please don't tell me to " go back and reread" something that I didn't read in the first place.

Your article does mention the natural gas, but I read the article linked to from the OP and it said nothing about natural gas. I wasn't even aware of the MSNBC article at the time.

[saras]

3. It doesn't PRODUCE energy. Where does the energy come from?

The "chemical reaction" is called combustion, or burning. It's catalyzed and controlled better in a fuel cell, but it's basically the same reaction. 2 H2 + O2 = 2 H2O

It takes more energy to produce hydrogen than you get from burning it, NO MATTER HOW YOU BURN IT. You can't escape the laws of thermodynamics.

Information from the company, via the US government... http://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/htac_02_2011_jx_eneos_takami.pdf

It appears to burn fuel oil or natural gas, and their main selling point is apparently that it takes less, or cruder, infrastructure to ship fuel around to houses than it does to build and connect them to an electrical grid. They actually assert that there is no cost to said shipping of fuel. Page 7 of the referenced document asserts 15% heat loss (reasonable) for the cells, but claims "no transmission loss" for the process of shipping fuel to individual homes.

[kestrel91316]

4. It doesn't "burn" the natural gas. It strips the hydrogen atoms from it,

IIRC using a catalyst of some sort.

And the waste heat can be used to heat water on site.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

7. "Feel the burn..." I'm all for fuel cells, they are the future of energy imho.

www.fuelcellenergy.com