The Bloom Box

leaskovski

leaskovski

leaskovski

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Look at the box on that!

http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/22/the-bloom-box-a-power-plant-for-the-home-video/ said:
Those two blocks can power the average high-consumption American home -- one block can power the average European home. At least that's the claim being made by K.R. Sridhar
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So instead of Producing carbon dioxide, we are now going to use up all our oxygen using these things! :D
 
That sounds to me like it is still going to release CO2, so not necessarily green?

Reactions between O2 and CxHy will generally create carbon dioxide and water, the box and paint just seem to be a catylist?
 
Amp34 said:
That sounds to me like it is still going to release CO2, so not necessarily green?

Reactions between O2 and CxHy will generally create carbon dioxide and water, the box and paint just seem to be a catylist?
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Seems so. I'd have thought the difference is just that there is no combustion, so there's less wasted energy. Also, if it doesn't use any more oxygen than it takes for regular combustion, it's not like it'd be using more oxygen than we do now.
 
The corporate-sized cells cost $700,000 to $800,000 ...... Ebay has installed its boxes on the front lawn of its San Jose location. It estimates to receive almost 15% of its energy needs from Bloom, saving about $100,000 since installing its five boxes 9 months ago
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Fail, takes 337.5 months to pay for itself, 28 years. I bet the boxes don't even last that long.
 
The corporate-sized cells cost $700,000 to $800,000 and are installed at 20 customers you've already heard of including FedEx and Wal-mart -- Google was first to this green energy party, using its Bloom Boxes to power a data center for the last 18 months. Ebay has installed its boxes on the front lawn of its San Jose location. It estimates to receive almost 15% of its energy needs from Bloom, saving about $100,000 since installing its five boxes 9 months ago
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Good to see its actually being used and seems to be working. Although costs need to come down.
 
bloom-box-pair-on-60-minutes.png


Who in gods name thought this was a good image to put on the story? LOOK AT HIM!
 
Le_Petit_Lapin said:
Fail, takes 337.5 months to pay for itself, 28 years. I bet the boxes don't even last that long.
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It's not far behind solar though (as if that says much). It looks pretty simple to make, but they need to make a lot of disks, by hand. I imagine it would be quite an easy process to automate, and that would cut costs a lot.
 
I'd be interested in how often you need to replace the blocks. You'll have to replace them sometime, as you don't just pump oxygen and natural gas together and magically get electricity. This "special ink" that coats the ceramic wafers is obviously what creates the reaction, and if its part of the reaction, its going to get consumed partially by it. How much use do you get out of each block of wafers before the coating gets to a level where it produces no appreciable power?
 
To me this just seems like there are a million and one questions that need to be answered about it. I fail to see how this could replace the power grid if we have to phone up the equivilent of the people that deliver Oil for CH systems to replenish the furl for the Bloom Box?
 
Super interesting, but as she said to the creator at the end of the video "you are an idealist". Sums it up for me.
 
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