The Bloom Box: An Energy Breakthrough?

Originally posted by Semus
I'm not too sure about this new technology, but here's what I am sure about...

The wires used in those "solar cells" are 98% plastic.

Solar cell? Did you actually watch the video or read the article? It's not a solar cell, and it's not made of plastic, it's a ceramic (made from molten glass/sand) insulator with some sort of dielectric compound on each side.

Originally posted by Semus
I think the first thing that the uneducated public needs to learn is that ALL plastic is OIL.

This is 100% true, but has nothing to do with this device.

Originally posted by Semus
Don't even get me started on electric cars. Tires=oil. Paint for the car=oil. Plastics used in cars=oil.

Yes most of the components of cars are made from petroleum products. But consider that the thousands of gallons per year of gasoline and oil that you put into your car is just a wee bit more than what was used in the one-time creation of the paint, plastic seats, tires, etc. The point of electric cars is that they don't BURN oil products, not totally ending all dependance on them.

Originally posted by Semus
Give me an energy source that doesn't use ANY oil whatsoever, and I'll consider it. Until then, remember that oil is in just about everything we use today.

If you want to nit-pick, its probably not feasible , since ANY device probably at the very least has insulated wire cables or tubes in it, which are made with dum-dum-dummmmm OIL. So until someone creates a device similar to this except using non-insulated wire that was created using a 100% petroleum-free production process (including shipment of the parts and delivery/installation), and glass tubing instead of pipes and hoses etc, you will always have something to say ZOMG OIL about

Originally posted by Semus
I do agree that we need to start limiting the amount of oil that we use every day, but once you do that, you will soon realize that without oil you will be living without technology.

Don't worry, in about 5 billion years our sun will become a red giant, and literally envelop the earth, and fry the rest of the solar system, so at that point all of us all-important humans inventions and struggles will all become moot and just a tiny speck of a footnote in the history of the universe that we are. Then you can finally be at peace :-)

1. Like the 300 miles before recharge car battery, some large corporation will buy the patent and close it down.

2. Electrical companies will charge you a fee even if you don't use the electricity. They do that with garbage pickup already.

3. As for availability of natural gas, there's plenty of it. Not gonna be a shortage. And it's unbelieveably cheap. Cars should use it.

I know it didn't, but people were acting like it was/is. There was no mention of "fuel" in the first post. Most people don't read the link and thus don't understand the device, then believe this black box is some how magic.

Originally posted by Penumbra
reply to post by XL5

 

It never said that it was going to create free energy... just more efficient and cleaner is what the quote says.

@Blazer

I should have been more specific in my post, I apologize. I was responding to another poster that had a link in his post to some new technology called "solar cells" and how their efficiency was at 25% and is now at 90%.

This was the basis for my post, sorry it confused you and anyone else who read my post.


Also, it may sound like I have this doomsday attitude, but in reality, I feel that human beings have no better technology then their minds. When we put our minds to things, we can accomplish just about anything.

"There are no problems, apart from the mind" -Krishnamurti


[edit on 22-2-2010 by Semus]

Let's not forget that Google is now an energy wholesaler.

industry.bnet.com...

Aside from that, those Bloom Boxes aren't that special, fuel is needed, and construction costs are not a drop in the ocean either. The boxes cost over 700-800 thousand dollars right now. (refer to the same article)

There are many better systems that can 'take you off the grid'. Which take time and effort to build, and maintainence is always required. I prefer to refer to 'perpetual motion' devices as much lesser continual motion sincethey do break down.

Not that I can offer proof right now, but near where I live there is a 75 year old farm that has been off the grid since the electricty went online in the area with a windmill and a load of car batteries. Been harassed by the power companies but as far as I've heard remains off the grid with his setup.

I don't have much faith in these Bloom Boxes, and I am well aware of the higher land taxes when private companies install wind farms near a town. The technology isn't new and this is an obvious cash-in, and at 700K for a box, I don't see 3K versions in the near future. Hydrogen cars are basically possible but not used because obviously an intelligent person would sell 'water crackers' to people so they can produce their own hydrogen.

If you ask me, given the amount of funding this guy has, I should be able to produce an even better and more efficient power generator within a year. One that won't cost 3K for a simple home, seeing as I have the parts in my garage to build a simple prototype right now for proof of concept.

Just stating that for no other reason than a point.
This isn't going to revolutionize anything, so don't give your hopes up.

-As an addition, water cracking is simple as any hydrogen cell is basically that. Many ways to build a simple one, and most gradeschools make one for science experiments.

A chemical version is done with water, lye and aluminum foil.
The foil is turned into aluminum oxide and the hydrogen is released as a gas. Fun for making exploding balloons.

[edit on 22-2-2010 by Mr. jack]

The big question is, how efficient is this box, and what is the devices useful life expectancy. For all the hype, there isn't any information to get excited about. You still have to hook it up to gas. At least with Solar power and wind power, you don't need to hook into the grid.

Being that efficiency numbers have not been put out, chances are they are not that great.

Originally posted by Blazer
Actually you are supposed to get a tax break for using clean energy. For instance if you add solar panels to your home, you get like a $3,000 tax deduction. So in theory, you would not only save money on your electric bill by using this, but also pay less taxes.

That would depend on the definition of "clean".

This generator still burns methane, and burning methane may be cleaner than burning coal, but it still is not "100% clean". I would be interested to learn if this falls under the definition of "clean" relative to the tax write-off.

Also, you said tax "deduction". Do you mean that it is a tax write-off a tax credit? Those are two different things. I think it's probably just a write-off.

Well surprise surprise, this "revolutionary" energy system uses fossil fuels to run.

I loved the part where that eBay guy was standing next to all those solar cells and said "the bloom box has a much smaller foot print than these cells and create 5x the energy."

1) The solar cells are on the ROOF!!!! They take up ZERO foot print on the ground!!!! The building is already there, so that was a moot point.

2) Of course the "bloom boxes" create more energy - they are BURNING FOSSIL FUELS!!! The solar panels burn nothing.

This bloom box product is 100% B.S. bunk.

Originally posted by harrytuttle
Well surprise surprise, this "revolutionary" energy system uses fossil fuels to run.

It runs on natural gas, or biogas, like methane. Which is not a fossil fuel. Even if it ran on only natural gas, natural gas is plentiful and cheap unlike oil.

Originally posted by harrytuttle
I loved the part where that eBay guy was standing next to all those solar cells and said "the bloom box has a much smaller foot print than these cells and create 5x the energy."

1) The solar cells are on the ROOF!!!! They take up ZERO foot print on the ground!!!! The building is already there, so that was a moot point.

When did he say GROUND footprint? I think its obvious he is talking about amount of energy produced per square foot. A Bloom Box that is the size of your ourdoor air conditioner compressor would produce way more energy than your entire roof of highly inefficient solar cells. :p

Originally posted by harrytuttle
2) Of course the "bloom boxes" create more energy - they are BURNING FOSSIL FUELS!!! The solar panels burn nothing.

It's not "burning" anything. It's a chemical reaction (yes I know that FIRE is technically a chemical reaction - you know what I mean). If you had one of these and just had to feed it a bit of methane, or other biogas, that seems pretty clean to me. I agree it's not as clean as solar, but as someone pointed out, most solar cells are plastic, which is made from oil. Solar is also terribly inefficient. Also, I know people on solar, and a couple days of cloudy weather puts them right back on the grid...not good

reply to post by Blazer


Unless you have some way of generating a biogas, you still are hooked to the grid. Natural gas is currently considered to be in high supply due to new drilling techniques that create large amounts of highly polluted waste water.

Hmm, could it be that Exxon now owning the new drilling technique patents, we are seeing this new device to make us dependent on natural gas?

Being that solar cells do not have to consume anything, that makes them far more efficient than this Bloom box could ever be.

There are likely non-petrol synthetic materials that can be made nowadays, and ceramics can replace most plastics in a pinch.
Recycling isn't a bad idea either, enough junk lying around to reuse that isn't already being used as such.

Also, those boxes apparently have a 50% efficiency rating, should have been in the link I had posted earlier; if not a quick Google run should find it.
-Forgot to mention that the efficiency refers to the cost of natural gas vs the same electric bill you would normally get.

There IS the idea about using a space based solar collector that generates electricty like any solar panel, expensive as hell, but could easily send the energy back via microwaves or something similar.
Some nonofiber materials make for efficient solar cells, so that can reduce the need for petroleum.

[edit on 22-2-2010 by Mr. jack]

It runs on natural gas, or biogas, like methane. Which is not a fossil fuel. Even if it ran on only natural gas, natural gas is plentiful and cheap unlike oil.

Natural Gas IS a fossil fuel. If you don't believe me, take a look where we obtain it from. It's pumped out of the ground. It's not about how much there is in the ground, it's how much is economical to dig out - from what I understand, natural gas pumped out of the ground in unconventional ways is more expensive than conventional pumping. Furthermore, the prices have jumped around significantly in the past.


The Economics of Natural Gas For Those With Poor Memories. The fuel to power natural gas power-stations, while cheaper than oil, is still relatively expensive compared to coal and nuclear, and is far more volatile than both. The advantages Natural Gas has are: Low capital cost, very high thermal efficiency of newer units (that minimize waste heat and fuel use), and it also pollutes far less than oil and coal.

What percentage of "natural" gas (about as natural as "natural" oil) is made from biofuel? 0.00001%? As far as the fuel cell in the OP goes, the bloom box, I hope it works out. I don't know enough about it to compare it to more conventional power generation methods. It looks somewhat promising.

When did he say GROUND footprint? I think its obvious he is talking about amount of energy produced per square foot. A Bloom Box that is the size of your ourdoor air conditioner compressor would produce way more energy than your entire roof of highly inefficient solar cells. :p

But if you're talking about biofuels from biomass such as biogas then it's necessary to compare the land footprint of the entire fuel cycle.



Solar has its own problems, such as completely uneconomical price, intermittency, low capacity factor. Wind is far better economically, but I've seen some estimates that show that wind can possibly increase fossil-fuel use because it creates inefficiencies in the grid. In my opinion we need more efficient fossil-fuel generation, including natural gas, as we are not and can not get off fossil fuels any-time soon. We will also need ways of completely eliminating fossil fuel consumption. It doesn't take a genius to see which forms of electricity can do this. Just look at the graph above and find ones that have extremely low land use, do not use fossil fuels, supply significant amounts of electricity at the moment, and can scale up rapidly. In my opinion, the answers are Nuclear, Natural Gas, Geothermal, Hydroelectric, Clean Coal (once it's developed) and future solar.

The world consumes 16830 terrawatt hours per year (and that is rising). To get all that from biomass would require 9,145,000 square kilometers, approximately the size of the USA.

most solar cells are plastic, which is made from oil.

Solar panels are made from plastic? FYI, it doesn't matter that they're made out of oil, it matters how much oil they NEED to build. I suspect that the oil input to build infrastructure (of any kind) is practically irrelevant compared to total consumption including burning oil for fuel. i.e. building things from oil but don't burn oil probably do not use much oil compared to things that burn oil.

[edit on 23/2/2010 by C0bzz]

I want one Box at my Home!

Hope they deliver soon to Europe

I hope this thing can be copy't,

Originally posted by serbsta
With such a buzz being generated around this invention and the massive risk Bloom Energy and its Bloom Box poses to current big time energy providers, what are the chances that we will actually see this idea come to fruition?

The unique aspect this designer has done is to make the 'ink' application against the polymer. In other words, he didn't invent anything about being able to create the energy, as the entire polymer business has already happened and existed for awhile now.

It appears he has designed an efficient means to apply the 'ink' to the polymer, which then would bring previous industry sized fuel cells down to a size of a flower pot.

My guess is the 'flower pot' or 'bloom box' is gonna expand (future version) into a complete mesh filled flower pot. The mesh is the polymer. The 'ink' is previously applied. And a organic material is used as biomass... from roots.

[edit on 23-2-2010 by dzonatas]

The BloomBox seems like a reasonable compromise for those of us who consume fossil fuels, but who are still leery about the orbo technology. If orbo is proven to be an over unity generator, the bloombox should not stand a decent chance. it depends on how much money Bloom can raise by the energy companies, who know they are being phased out.

If you were to present the two working products to anybody, and make them perform a 'taste test', I'd say that there seems to be far less negative consequences associated with orbo. The Bloom Box just makes the staus quo more efficient.

Gas is going to rise above $3 a gallon again this summer. Are the oil companies hoarding as much money as they can before the public sees that "their product" is harmful on many levels?

ORBO vs BLOOM
will it be the new Blu Ray vs HD DVD?

I will be sure to watch that special, wondering when its will come out to the general public at a cost that we can all afford.

reply to post by Mr. jack


Likely the efficiency is the energy provided as electricity relative to the total amount of energy in the gas. 50% is good for a small unit. As a reference, sub-critical coal fired power plants are in the high 30's.

Originally posted by pteridine
reply to post by Mr. jack

 

Likely the efficiency is the energy provided as electricity relative to the total amount of energy in the gas. 50% is good for a small unit. As a reference, sub-critical coal fired power plants are in the high 30's.

Indeed.

Nuclear is around the mid 30's, meaning about 35% of the heat gets turned into electricity. And the really high efficiency natural gas plants approach an astounding 60%. Here in Australia we have a coal power plant with an efficiency of 24% that is supposed to operate till 2030.

Will this "Bloom Box" be better than solar panels producing free energy from the sun???

When people talk about solar energy being free, they really mean $50 per watt of capacity (when adjusted for capacity factor). Whereas Coal is

Originally posted by harrytuttle
Well surprise surprise, this "revolutionary" energy system uses fossil fuels to run.

I loved the part where that eBay guy was standing next to all those solar cells and said "the bloom box has a much smaller foot print than these cells and create 5x the energy."

1) The solar cells are on the ROOF!!!! They take up ZERO foot print on the ground!!!! The building is already there, so that was a moot point.

2) Of course the "bloom boxes" create more energy - they are BURNING FOSSIL FUELS!!! The solar panels burn nothing.

This bloom box product is 100% B.S. bunk.

He means CO2 footprint, if you include production, transportation, assembly and then finally how much can be recycled when you scrap the stuff. Laugh.