The Power Generation Blog

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.

President Obama Pushing Nuclear Power

President Obama has been pushing hard for climate change reform, despite recent political losses for his party, inability to push through healthcare reform, and seeing all his federal nominations blocked. Unfortunately for him, it seems as if his climate change bill is destined for failure.

The President's thinking on the matter is fairly succinct, according to the New York Times.

"There is so much natural gas now that we've moved into the shale plays, the real challenge is, how do you use the available gas to meet near-term energy goals?" Obama said. "It takes the government to get out of the way and do the things it can do."
Besides the cap and trade aspect of Obama's energy reform vision, he is also trying to sell the public on nuclear power. The President has been touring the country trying to drum up support for his plan. He told a crowd in Maryland,

"Nuclear energy remains our largest source of fuel that procures no carbon emissions," he said. "We'll need to increase our supply of nuclear power. It's that simple."

Residents of Maryland hope that the government will open up its purse and subsidize the creation of a nuclear reactor at Calvert Cliffs, as he already did for a nuclear reactor in Burke, GA. The President awarded a conditional grant of $8.3 billion for Southern Co. to build a nuclear reactor in Burke.

But not everyone is for such a spending plan.. The Gaston Gazette has published an editorial denouncing the Obama plan to build nuclear in Georgia, saying,

Using loan guarantees to "jump-start" the building of more nuclear reactors, however, is a poor way to get the job done. It is argued that private investors have been reluctant to lend money for nuclear projects, in part because regulatory requirements are onerous, and it is true that it takes the Nuclear Regulatory Commission four years to issue a permit for a nuclear plant.

They go on to cite a Cato Institute analyst who claims that nuclear power plants too long to be completed. This line of thinking fails to capture exactly why the administration seems to be pushing nuclear power, though. If cost-effectiveness were the only criterion for what energy solutions were the best to pursue, then so-called green technology would never take off, which doesn't necessarily speak poorly about green-energy. All the money in the world won't be able to purchase a clean planet.

Argentina Expands Its Nuclear Power

The Wall Street Journal just released an article stating that Argentina will complete its third nuclear power plant by the end of 2010. The nation's Planning Minister, Julio De Vido, said that the plant is called Atucha II, and that it will be completed ahead of schedule. It was previously thought to finish construction by the first or second quarter of 2011.

Atucha II, along with the Argentine-Paraguayan Yacreta hydroelectric plant, will add more than 2,000 megawatts of power generation to the country, increasing its capacity by 10%. The plants will go far toward decreasing the blackouts, which have heavily plagued the country for the last three years when natural gas began suffering shortages.

Strangely, Atucha II was originally thought to go live back in 1987, but political and economic forces conspired to sideline the project for more than 20 years. The plant will be built next to Atucha I, which went live in 1974. Argentina's second nuclear plant, Embalse, commenced operations in 1984. All tolled, the three plants will generate more than 1700 megawatts of power. Nuclear power accounts for more than 6% of Argentina's overall power generation.

Composits in Power Generation and Beyond

Composite materials like Kevlar, carbon fiber, resin epoxies, polyesters, and vinyl esters are relied on heavily by the power generation industry. Composites are extremely versatile due to their

excellent dielectric qualities;
superior mechanical strength with regard to their weight;
low thermal conductivity; and
corrosion resistance.

Some common components made by composites include collector assemblies, slot armor, turn insulation, tape kits, wedges, and thermocouples--just to name a few.

If composites were used to create and shield the massive power generation machines used to power whole cities, then you would think they were pretty robust. But now, NASA has announced that they've found a way to make composite materials even cooler: They've built an all-composite space capsule.

The properties we outlined above--a good strength to weight ratio; high corrosion and heat resistance; low thermal conductivity--all contribute to making composite applications perfect for space. In particular, the ability of composites to be formed in complex shapes while retaining their great strength and structural integrity is very important. Mike Kirsch, the NASA Engineering and Safety Center project manager sounds very optimistic when he says,

"We are very pleased with the entire test series. Throughout testing, there were no anomalies and performance aligned amazingly well with analytical predictions."

It is incredibly humbling and exciting that the frontiers of human knowledge can be expanded using the same kind of high tech materials that allow us to charge our cellphone and brew coffee in the morning.

The Power Generation Blog

The Unsung Hero of Industrial Power Generation?

On the Bloom Box

What Happened to Cap and Trade?

President Obama Pushing Nuclear Power

Argentina Expands Its Nuclear Power

Composits in Power Generation and Beyond

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