Bloom box challenges: Reliability, cost

[wpsedgwick]

Source: Green Technology Daily

After last week's star-studded, feel-good rollout of Bloom Energy's "Bloom box" server, the start-up now faces the daunting task of delivering products that are reliable and cheap.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Bloom Energy held a press conference last Week detailing the Bloom box fuel cell, which is designed to be stacked into small blocks and housed in a unit about the size of a refrigerator.

The Bloom Box - which now costs $700,000 to $800,000 - is essentially a device for making electricity on demand. Methane or other hydrocarbons are fed into the device along with oxygen, and the mixture is heated to around 1,000 degrees Celsius. As the gases pass through catalytic plates, the machine produces electricity, as well as some heat, carbon dioxide and water.

Read more: http://www.greentechnologydaily.com/new-technologies/648-bloom-box-challenges-reliability-cost

[skippy911sc]

1. I read about this some time ago and saw the 60 minutes

show on it. Looked interesting, but how to get the methane or other fuel for it to produce the electricity. I also wonder what the carbon foot print of this unit is. I know they are in beta test use around the country, I think google is using the device.

[wpsedgwick]

2. A lot of unknowns...

There is a lot of skeptisism out there right now, and mainly because the Bloom Box concept is a form of energy generation that has never been both cost effective and successful, which is what they claim. It does look promising and there are a number of large corporations currently testing the Bloom Box energy servers including Google, Amazon, Ebay, and quite a few others.

[AtheistCrusader]

3. The catalytics are usually dependent upon precious metals like Palladium.

Hard to make cost-effective, without a cheaper medium.

Perhaps these are, I don't know. One point, the very high pricetag cited in the article is for the corporate-sized variants, not consumer-level home power systems.

[MicaelS]

4. No precious metal catalysts used in the Bloom Box

He invented new catalysts that can be painted on the plates that are made from sand.