The Power Generation Blog: March 2010

We've been covering hydrogen fuel cell technology a lot, lately. Well, here's another story. A company called eHydrogen Solutions, Inc. has created some exciting-sounding hydrogen fuel cell technology. The company's new H2-Reactor Development Project looks to pull of something fairly audacious: It wants to use only water and reactive metal alloys to produce energy. According to the company,

The reactive metals cause water molecules to release hydrogen and oxygen, which immediately reacts with aluminum to produce aluminum oxide (alumina) which can be recycled back into aluminum. Recycling aluminum from nearly pure alumina is less expensive than mining the aluminum-containing ore bauxite, thereby creating a reusable, sustainable, and zero-emission power source.

This sounds like bare magic. It's actually just a slight refinement of the idea underlying the Bloom Box technology, which also produces nominal waste. The company that eventually dominates the hydrogen fuel cell energy market will be the one that wins the race to the bottom on cost, still. The industrial power generation game is still ruled by cash.

The Unsung Hero of Industrial Power Generation?

We've been getting into the broader aspects of industrial power generation. So it seemed like a good time to get back to some specific basics. Industrial power generation calls for the working in concert of a fairly large amount of parts. In industrial power generators, one of the most important parts is the rotor. A rotor is a solid steel drum formed with axially extending channels that carry electrically-conductive windings. These windings are electrically insulated from the rotor body by slot armor, which is sometimes called slot insulation.

Selecting the right slot armor is one of the most important things an industrial power generation company can do, since slot armor is more or less what prevents an industrial power generator from failing in a very bad way. Most leading slot armor products come in U-shaped, Z-shaped, and L-shaped configurations, and have a Class H temperature rating (meaning they withstand temperatures up to 180°C). Slot armor should also be constructed from materials that have high levels of electrical insulation properties, low coefficients of friction, and a good amount of flexibility to fit into tight spots.

Many leading manufacturers of slot armor generally use their own trademarked engineered laminates. These laminates are made from materials like epoxy glass, aramids, and dielectric films. Because of the amount of electricity and heat present in industrial power generators, the custom composite materials going into your slot armor are going to be extremely important. Make sure you know the exact specifications and operating conditions of your industrial power generators while you're speccing out slot insulation.

On the Bloom Box

By now, you must have heard about the magical-seeming Bloom Box. It's been all over the Internet, and 60 Minutes ran a segment on the idea, last month. On their site, Bloom has a neat flash video that outlines how the Bloom Box words, roughly speaking.

The Bloom Box is a fuel cell, and a fuel cell is basically a little power plant. By combining heat, fuel, and air, it generates electricity, which is then stored in a battery. One thing that separates the Bloom Box from other fuel cells is that some of its parts that would normally be made from toxic materials are actually made from an ink coating. That is, the anode and cathode portions of the Bloom Box are made from a mysterious, proprietary ink material. The electrolyte is made from a ceramic material.

Basically, the Bloom Box generates a massive amount of heat--about 1800ºF--but the amount of heat it generates is nearly the amount of heat it needs to generate power. Its rated efficiency is greater than 50%. To put that in perspective, most solar power is rated at 10% to 15%.

Presently, a 100 kilowatt-hour Bloom Box energy server contains thousands of solid oxide fuel cells. (Incidentally, each of those fuel cells has enough energy to power a light bulb.) They are pretty large units. Each one costs around $800,000. However, eBay has claimed it's saved over $100,000 since adopting Bloom Box technology. They cost about $0.09 per kW hour versus $0.14 for typical power costs in California. Another benefit of the Bloom Box is that it boasts (in Google's case) 98% uptime.

It remains to be seen if the Bloom Box technology is scalable. It may never become applicable for domestic applications. But it is a good first step, and its nice to see such a unique power generation product get mainstream attention.

What Happened to Cap and Trade?

We have been covering cap and trade for a little while. Let's check in and see what's going on with its latest developments. With the so-called cap and trade bill may be dead, as Lindsay Graham has said, but it now looks like the Environmental Protection Agency is trying to save the measure, after being left for dead in the Senate. The EPA's website has a page dedicated to cap and trade:

Cap and trade is an environmental policy tool that delivers results with a mandatory cap on emissions while providing sources flexibility in how they comply. Successful cap and trade programs reward innovation, efficiency, and early action and provide strict environmental accountability without inhibiting economic growth.

Examples of successful cap and trade programs include the nationwide Acid Rain Program and the regional NOx Budget Trading Program in the Northeast. Additionally, EPA issued the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) on March 10, 2005, to build on the success of these programs and achieve significant additional emission reductions.

It is now thought that the EPA will use the existing Clean Air Act, which was set up in the 1990s to combat acid rain, in order to institute a cap and trade regulation. Indeed, the EPA has made a 2011 budget request for a $7.5 million initiative to look into a "market-oriented" greenhouse gas reduction, which sounds a lot like cap and trade. Such a plan on the EPA would be audacious, and surely face many challenges. The US Chamber of Commerce, the world's largest not-for-profit lobbying firm, has already filed a petition asking the EPA to reconsider its course of action.

It remains to be seen how the presence or absence of a cap and trade bill would influence the power generation industry. While it's thought that power generation costs would rise, it also seems likely that the power generation companies will be able to pass onto consumers rising costs of energy production. Whether the country's quality of life, health, and safety would improve is certainly uncertain, but a move to sustainable, clean energy--even at an increased cost upfront--seems to be the only way for America to sustain its still-growing population.

The Power Generation Blog

The Unsung Hero of Industrial Power Generation?

On the Bloom Box

What Happened to Cap and Trade?

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