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.
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