Anybody else catch the 60 minutes piece on the fuel cells? Very interesting and they are working right now at Google, EBay, some Hospitals etc. We are going to start seeing some fruits of our labor post 5.00 a gallon gasoline. An insane amount of money went into alternatives a couple of years ago. This is why we need to tax fossil fuels. They are planning on a mass media event Wednesday. You will hear about the boxes this week. Two boxes that fit in both of your hands would power the average American home.

(02-22-2010 07:27 AM)Machiavelli Wrote:  Anybody else catch the 60 minutes piece on the fuel cells? Very interesting and they are working right now at Google, EBay, some Hospitals etc. We are going to start seeing some fruits of our labor post 5.00 a gallon gasoline. An insane amount of money went into alternatives a couple of years ago. This is why we need to tax fossil fuels. They are planning on a mass media event Wednesday. You will hear about the boxes this week. Two boxes that fit in both of your hands would power the average American home.

If the technology is more efficient than fossil fuels, then why do you need to tax them?

The piece said we would see it in 5-10 years. As long as a cheaper alternative is readily available you won't see it. Ramp out electric cars. This could be a game changer. I'm waiting on Owl's take and wondering if he saw it. I would like us to put our military budget surcharged on a gallon of gas. Then the money that went there pays off the budget. If we go neutral there. Start paying off the debt.

(02-22-2010 08:12 AM)bubbapt Wrote:  

(02-22-2010 07:27 AM)Machiavelli Wrote:  Anybody else catch the 60 minutes piece on the fuel cells? Very interesting and they are working right now at Google, EBay, some Hospitals etc. We are going to start seeing some fruits of our labor post 5.00 a gallon gasoline. An insane amount of money went into alternatives a couple of years ago. This is why we need to tax fossil fuels. They are planning on a mass media event Wednesday. You will hear about the boxes this week. Two boxes that fit in both of your hands would power the average American home.

If the technology is more efficient than fossil fuels, then why do you need to tax them?

Because Mach likes tyranny.

This sounds promising, but the 60 Minutes piece is more of a tease that still leaves a lot of questions unanswered. A few key points.

First, there ain't no free lunch. The solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) still needs an external fuel source, and that fuel source, while flexible, is most likely petroleum-based. What it provides is a relatively pollution-free way of extracting energy from that fuel source. That's a good thing, but don't oversell its virtues.

Second, at this stage it's still pricey. One problem with alternatives in general is that they're all still pricey. A carbon tax that closed that gap would help get alternatives online, although in this case that tax would presumably apply to the fuel source. On the other hand, you do get a net saving in pollution, so perhaps there would be a tax break for this kind of application.

Third, this is not something that will be powering your car. Size, weight, and heat considerations preclude that. This product is designed to provide electricity to static locations--your home, an office building, a bank of them serving a subdivision, etc. SOFC's are not really versatile, a trait shared with many alternatives.

The big thing is that this won't replace any appreciable amount of oil. In fact, to the extent that it uses a petroleum-based external fuel source, and replaces electricity generated from non-petroleum sources, it could actually increase the demand for petroleum. This is a substitute form of "energy" but it is not a substitute for oil.

There are many substitutes for energy that are not substitutes for oil. That distinction is being blurred for many solutions, intentionally I believe, by many in the current political administration. I don't think Bloom Energy is guilty of that, they seem pretty straightforward. But I'm not sure Leslie Stahl knew what questions she really needed to ask.

As for the comment about the military budget, it's unfortunately not big enough to amount to much more than a drop in the bucket toward paying down the debt. It's not even enough to make a huge dent in the annual deficit. That's how bad things are. Run the numbers for yourself if you don't believe me.

Quite simply: If you want an energy policy that reduces dependence on foreign oil, then you develop technologies that use nuclear and coal. Not just nuclear, but nuclear, natural gas, and coal. If you leave out coal, then you don't have an effective policy.

Unfortunately, the real push in America is not to reduce dependency on oil from the Middle East; it is to remove carbon fuels from our every day lives, without reasonable alternatives. This is economic suicide: it doesn't make economic sense, it will only "create" new green jobs at the expense of more energy-efficent jobs in the oil, coal, and gas industries, and it will reduce American living standards.

Some day it might, but that day isn't 5-10 years from now. If you try to put in place some half-a**ed tax policy without a reasonable plan, you're just destroying ther very econonmic engine that will eventually come up with these solutions over the next 4 to 5 decades.

(02-22-2010 09:25 AM)bubbapt Wrote:  Quite simply: If you want an energy policy that reduces dependence on foreign oil, then you develop technologies that use nuclear and coal. Not just nuclear, but nuclear, natural gas, and coal. If you leave out coal, then you don't have an effective policy.
Unfortunately, the real push in America is not to reduce dependency on oil from the Middle East; it is to remove carbon fuels from our every day lives, without reasonable alternatives. This is economic suicide: it doesn't make economic sense, it will only "create" new green jobs at the expense of more energy-efficent jobs across the entire spectrum of the American economy, and it will reduce American living standards.
Some day it might work, but that day isn't 5-10 years from now. If you try to put in place some half-a**ed tax policy without a reasonable plan, you're just destroying ther very economic engine that will eventually come up with these solutions over the next 4 to 5 decades.

I generally hate the practice of changing things in posts by others, but (a) that needed changing, and (b) I'm guessing you don't disagree.

You hit on a key point. We're making this huge push to get off carbon fuels before we have anything to go to in their place. Realistically, we are 25-50 years away from having those things to go to. And that's if we (a) move at warp speed, and (b) get very lucky somewhere--neither of which has characterized the last 35 years or so.

We do not have an acceptable substitute for oil at this point, nor do we really know where we might get one. Pretending otherwise is suicide--economically, environmentally (yes, environmentally), and national-security-wise.

As for coal, I think one of the big R&D targets right now should be coal liquification/gasification. It's doable--Hitler ran a large part of the Wehrmacht on it--but not exactly environmentally friendly. It creates a lot of CO2, and we don't know how to avoid that or what to do with it. A breakthrough there, and we'd have a nice fuel stream for all the Bloom Boxes we could build.

(02-22-2010 09:41 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  It creates a lot of CO2, and we don't know how to avoid that or what to do with it. A breakthrough there, and we'd have a nice fuel stream for all the Bloom Boxes we could build.

A lot of push for oil-gae. They're breeding the algae to thrive in high CO2 environment.

I think it's great.

But as both of you are saying, we need the alternative fuels in place before we start weaning from oil.

Another approach that I've suggested is genetically modify some useful plant w/ kudzu, so that it is a rapid carbon sink. Curiously, Freeman Dyson has made the same suggestion.

I wonder where we are with the LS 99 the bacteria whose waste was bio - diesel? Or the algae that grew in the desert in plastic bags that could be used as a fuel source? We are on the cusp and it is a game changer. Think of all of the money that goes out a day and then keeping that money here at home.

Interesting stuff. It wasn't clear to me (half listening to the 60 minutes interview) how much fuel it would take compared to conventional combustion or how an infrastructure would support it. Somewhere in Oklahoma, there is a very happy Texan...

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/02...hroug.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912/wallace-energy

From the Atlantic article,

Quote:As for results: in an ongoing trial at the University of Tennessee, a five-kilowatt Bloom box (the size of a large coffee table and capable of powering a 5,000-square-foot house) has proved twice as efficient as a traditional gas-burning system and produced 60 percent fewer emissions.

So, this is not a perpetual energy machine, and it probably won't make sense for everyone to have in their back yards. It does have a great deal of potential for remote villages in the third world without the powerline infrastructure.

BTW, Venture Capitalist John Doerr ... Rice Alumnus

(02-22-2010 10:16 AM)DrTorch Wrote:  

(02-22-2010 09:41 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  It creates a lot of CO2, and we don't know how to avoid that or what to do with it. A breakthrough there, and we'd have a nice fuel stream for all the Bloom Boxes we could build.

A lot of push for oil-gae. They're breeding the algae to thrive in high CO2 environment.
I think it's great.
But as both of you are saying, we need the alternative fuels in place before we start weaning from oil.
Another approach that I've suggested is genetically modify some useful plant w/ kudzu, so that it is a rapid carbon sink. Curiously, Freeman Dyson has made the same suggestion.

I'm a proponent of oil-gae, and I agree that looks promising. The algae make a useful biofuel source.

Now, finding a use for kudzu, even if only in an offhand way, would be pretty special.

This is THE challenge of our time.

Why couldn't you plug your car into an outlet at home? Why couldn't this be used? Another one, high speed electric trains?

here's the article from a couple of years ago on the bugs that poo oil.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/en...133668.ece

(02-22-2010 10:28 AM)Machiavelli Wrote:  Why couldn't you plug your car into an outlet at home? Why couldn't this be used? Another one, high speed electric trains?

There are three problems to overcome with any of these technologies.

1. Cost. They are all relatively expensive. A carbon tax of some sort closes that gap. If it's not offset somewhere else, it craters the economy. But a revenue-neutral (or nearly so) tax could work.
2. Scale. Compare the impact of these solutions to the size of the overall problem, and they're just drops in the bucket. Getting them to work on an order of magnitude to make an impact is a 25-year problem. Seriously.
3. Infrastructure. This is the problem with attempting to make things oil substitutes. If we go to electric cars, that's great, but right now the batteries don't last long enough for them to be practical for at least half our population, and we don't have a way to charge up a bunch of electric cars without browning out the grid. If we use Bloom Boxes to charge up the cars, that's great, but we aren't saving any oil, plus we need a way to get the fuel to the Bloom Box. That's another 25-year problem, but if we start on both scale and infrastructure now, and we guess right so that the source that we solve the scale problem for ends up being the same one that we build the infrastructure for, we can do both in 25 rather than 50.

The tendency is to see a technology and call it a game changer. The problem is that making the technology work, at least in the lab setting, is often the least of the problems. Getting from the lab to usefulness in the real world is usually the far more daunting task. And that's the one that the pure science community never talks about.

A lot has been said about how JFK told us to put a man on the moon and we did so within the decade. That grossly misstates what actually happened. By the time JFK stood in Rice Stadium and asked, "Why does Rice play Texas," we already had a well-developed space program. The first astronauts had been selected 5 years previously, and three of them had already flown in space. The basic technology was in place by the time the Germans were launching V-2's into London in 1943. It took 25 years to solve the scale and infrastructure issues (in the Cold War, cost really was not an issue).

All that JFK did was this: The space program was at a crossroads and needed to make a decision--do a space station first and then go to the moon (von Braun and the army wanted this) or bypass the space station and go directly to the moon? By setting the goal that he did, JFK took the space station out of the timeline and made the decision. That is all. If it hadn't been for the previous 50 years of effort, JFK's challenge would have been meaningless. Thinking that we can flip a switch and have alternative energy is an erroneous conclusion drawn by applying faulty logic to misstated facts.

What we really need to do is pick something, commit to it, and run with it. That is what JFK did for the space program--made a decision, so things could move forward.

I personally think electricity is the way to go. I think the issues there are easier to solve. Battery life is the toughest, but we can always go hybrid. We can do nukes, we can do wind, we can do solar, we can build transmission, we can build electric trains (freight, high-speed passenger, and commuter/transit) with existing technology, and as we commit more to them the technologies will improve. Anything else, we could easily spend 25 years and still have absolutely nothing. Just like we spent the last 35 years.

the way I read it the Bloom Boxes convert electricity from 40% of the oil that we would traditionally use. That's big and we could be self sufficient. I'm not trying to be overly simplistic, but these next two statements clarify my line of thinking.

1. When Columbus first sailed the Atlantic, his ships were not prepared for the voyage. the "technology" of the time was suited for the Mediterean. But once we knew we could get there the technology exploded. Now think we can make that trip through the air. We need to know we can get there.

2. When Cortes reached Mexico he had his eleven ships burned. This provided the intense motivation to succeed.

(02-22-2010 11:16 AM)Machiavelli Wrote:  the way I read it the Bloom Boxes convert electricity from 40% of the oil that we would traditionally use.

That statement makes no sense. What are you trying to say?

Not trying to be short with you. I'm just trying to understand what you think you are saying there so I can understand how to explain it to you. If you're trying to say that Bloom Boxes would reduce our oil consumption 40%, that can't be right because we don't use 40% of our oil consumption on applications that Bloom Boxes could address. And they don't reduce oil use anyway (or at least petroleum use, they would likely use NGL's).

With easy oil we lack the motivation.

All right fossil fuels boil water to make steam to turn a turbine that spins a coiled magnet to make electricity. Here we pump oxygen across a filter to generate elctricity. We use Hydrogen in the process. We get hydrogen from fossil fuels but we could concievably get the hydrogen from water. The Bloom boxes can use any hydrocarbon (Nina, Pinta, Santa Marie). I want to use water. (Boeing 747)