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Renewable energy

semar | Posted in Energy, Heating & Insulation on April 4, 2013 04:54am

I just read an article published by the Vancouver Sun, Friday, March 29, 2013 entitled “Scientists aim to energize your house”

The article reports about Calgary researchers’ fuel device is half the size of a fridge and delivers renewable energy.

The major block in wind and solar power is the ability to store the obtained energy in reasonable “housing”. Batterypacks presently are too large and too expensive to use in normal household use.

The researchers patented their technology and started FireWater Fuel Corp.

To power houses, the plan is to feed electricity produced by solar or wind energy systems into electrolyzers in the home, which would then convert the power into chemical energy that would be stored until needed. The new catalysts, which will be used to coat electrodes inside the electrolyzers, will help drive the reactions that split water into oxygen and hydrogen. Hydrogen, a potent fuel, can be readily stored and can be reconverted into electricity as needed.

The scientists say a typical house would require an electrolyzer about the half size of a fridge. It would contain a few liters of water and produce a couple of kilograms of hydrogen a day, enough to generate the electricity needed to keep a household humming.

They hope to have ahousehold unit, costing about $ 10,000.– ready for testing by 2015. To get off the grid, a house would also need to have solarpanels or some form of renewable energy system to create electricity to feed the electrolyzer.

With costs coming down for PV panels it could make independence from the grid more and more attractive and maybe just as popular as stainless steel appliances and granite countertops

The scientists clearly state that they are in a testing phase and no actual commercial unit is yet available, but it is encouraging to see that efforts in that direction are made.

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  1. DanH | Apr 04, 2013 08:15pm | #1

    This scheme's been around for at least 10 years, maybe 20 -- never been brought to market.  Hard to say if this outfit has anything new to bring to the party.

    1. junkhound | Apr 30, 2013 01:01am | #7

      This scheme's been around for at least 10 years, maybe 20

      At least over 50 years. 

      Saw my first fuel cell on a demo allis chalmers tractor in 1963.  Worked on phosphoric acid and H2Br cells in the early 80s, and on and off since then. 

      Always has been the next new great thing.

      The technology has improved so that the Pt catalyst loading needed has dropped by a factor of 100, but then the cost of Pt has gone up by almost that much also, so cost is still a big factor, not to mention the pumps and controls, etc.

      Most productive one I ever saw was the one United technologies installed at a laundry in Portland OR in the early 80's.  Phosphoric acid type, 40 kW, about a 12 foot cube.  Nat gas and refromer powered, about 40% efficient, but all the 'waste' heat could be used in the laundry process 24/7.  Limited opportunities like that though. 

      1. DanH | Apr 30, 2013 06:46am | #8

        Yeah, I remember the AC tractor.  But that wasn't bi-directional.  Serious attempts (outside the lab) at bi-directional fuel cells are more recent.

  2. florida | Apr 04, 2013 08:19pm | #2

    Don't be encouraged. It will always be in a testing phase. The "scientists" involed will always need more money for more test and success will always be just around the corner,

  3. gfretwell | Apr 04, 2013 09:07pm | #3

    The problem is the inefficiency of the conversion both ways. Even with a fuel cell, you would be lucky to get half of what you started with, coming back.

    1. DanH | Apr 04, 2013 09:17pm | #4

      There are a few experimental installations of such equipment (on a larger scale) by utilities.  I believe the economics would be reasonable for such installations if production were scaled up.  But it's a complex (and somewhat hazardous) technology to use on a smaller scale.

  4. timrowledge | Apr 29, 2013 03:16pm | #5

    Storage, not production

    This isn't energy production, it's energy storage. One of the important problems with any of the renewable energy sources  like wind, solar, tidal is the time-varying nature; solar tends not to produce much at night, wind doesn't always blow. So right now even with lots of wind/solar production you'd still need a lot of baseline power production capacity to smooth out the total supply. Other approaches to storing 'spare' energy have been tried over the years but can be quite expensive - consider the  Energy storage  and Pumped-storage hydroelectricity project for example.

    This device is using 'spare' power to split water into oxygen and hydrogen so that later on you can run the H through a fuelcell and get back power and hot water. Yes, you don't get as much power out as you fed in, like any sort of device. However, if your input power was 'spare' then what were you going to do with it anyway? Unless you are in a position to be able to sell it on, far better to slightly innefficiently store it than throw it away.

    The potential breakthrough from the people in Calgary is the massive cost reduction in the price of the catalyst used; IIRC claimed to be many hundreds of times, by using essentially rust instead of rather expensive unobtanium-multi-costates. That could make a very costly system practical for small-scale use. It might even make it possible to home generate hydrogen for automotive use.

    1. gfretwell | Apr 29, 2013 09:33pm | #6

      However, if your input power was 'spare' then what were you going to do with it anyway? Unless you are in a position to be able to sell it on, far better to slightly innefficiently store it than throw it away.

      That is what the grid tie deal is all about.

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