Dr. Ian Birkby, AZojomo, via Eureka Alert - Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFC) have attracted major interest from research and development communities as an alternative source of power, with commercial trials already under way. In these fuel cells electricity is generated via electro-chemical reactions using hydrogen based gas (? more often hydrocarbon gases such as natural gas) and oxygen as a fuel and oxidant, respectively.
Sealing these units is a critical technical issue that needs further work before they can be put into widespread commercial use. In particular the system chosen must exhibit good gas tightness, adhesion with adjoining components (electrolyte and connector), chemical compatibility, matching coefficient of thermal expansion and electrical insulation. . . . continued
SOFC/turbines running on biogas are the best backup power source for wind and solar. The GHG saved by using manure, wood waste, and farm waste to produce biogas and organic soil fertilizer/amendment and the GHG saved by preventing fertilizer and manure runnoff is enourmous.
The electricity is produced at 75% efficiency and water is actually cleaned and recycled in the process.
Portable SOFC/microturbine backup generators in electric cars will run on widely available fuel and facilitate vehicles that average over 400 mpg.
This field of research should get as much support as needed to become widely available as soon as possible. This climate and oil (and nuclear proliferation) war emergency situation makes that vital.
Posted by: amazingdrx | June 17, 2007 at 04:48 PM
What would such a hybrid genset cost? Seems like it'll be prohibitively expensive for most drivers. Better put in an inexpensive, small, reasonably efficient ICE genset until the cost of SOFC's/microturbines comes down some more. Going for perfection is no good if it means years of additional delay.
IIRC SOFC's/microturbines are ~65% efficient with today's tech. 50% SOFC plus (50% waste heat *30% microturbine).
75% is possible in the future though as both SOFC's and microturbines reach higher efficiencies...
Posted by: Calamity | June 18, 2007 at 07:55 AM
4 or 5 moving parts in an sOFC/microturbine. Versus how many for an iCE generator? Will we wait to buy these from walmart/china? probably, with the job outsourcing spree bribing our government.
no rare elements in the franklin fuel cell either. as usual, mass production is key.
Boeing has one for backup power for their planes and to power unmanned aerial vehicles. 75 or 60%? Still far better than an iCE gas guzzler.
the multifuel franklin unit could plugin to biogas or natural gas for a home based distributed power generation system to backup the renewable grid.
It would also run on wood chips or other cellulosic biomass with a pyrolization unit running off the waste heat. With the gases from pyrolization fed to the fuel cell and charcoal as a soil amendment byproduct.
Posted by: amazingdrx | June 18, 2007 at 09:48 AM
The amount of moving parts in x system is a poor indicator for the total cost of that system.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not disputing that this SOFC/microturbine would be far superior to an ICE in terms of efficiency. But ICE's are off-the-shelf and cheap right now, and you can let it run @ peak efficiency all the time. Maybe get 35% (even more if it's a diesel).
However, that's not the end of it. Let's say you have 10% losses in the charge/discharge cycle of the battery, plus an average 80 (ish?) percent efficiency for the electric motor (DC might get more). Then you'd get about 25 percent efficiency overall.
Using these numbers on a state of the art, 65 percent efficient SOFC/microturbine, that's 0,65*0,90*0,80 leaves perhaps 47% efficiency overall.
There may be other parasitic losses as well, which would lower the total efficiency even more.
So yes, really good efficiency, but not quite as high as you say...
And anyway, for most commuters it's the plug-in feature that gives you the largest liquid fuel use reduction.
Distributed power generation is another story, I'm totally with you on that. When SOFC's/microturbines get significantly cheaper, things get really interesting...
Posted by: Calamity | June 19, 2007 at 05:05 AM
sofc is good idea for develpping the energy source.but que. is
is there we use ZrO2 as a electrolyte?
if yes then what is the technice to develope a thin film solid oxide fuel cell using this material? ? ?
reply me on my e-mail id.
thanx
Posted by: indravadan tandel | August 09, 2007 at 01:18 AM
sofc is good idea for develpping the energy source.but que. is
is there we use ZrO2 as a electrolyte?
if yes then what is the technice to develope a thin film solid oxide fuel cell using this material? ? ?
reply me on my e-mail id.
thanx
Posted by: indravadan tandel | August 09, 2007 at 01:23 AM