Your Daily Geek – The Bloom Box

Small fuel cell that uses O2 and a hydrocarbon fuel to generate electricity.  Something to keep an eye on.

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5 Responses to Your Daily Geek – The Bloom Box

  1. Davidwhitewolf says:

    Yay, a Shipstone!

  2. Toastrider says:

    It /looks/ neat, but Bloom is being extremely quiet about how it works. I can understand if they’ve got patents pending, but I know a couple engineers who are badly tempted to steal one of those units and dismantle it just to see the innards.

  3. Rivrdog says:

    Can you say “Cold Fusion”?

    This sooper secritcy is NOT the way to introduce new technology.

    The secrecy is meant to derail peer review. Why else would the big presser show a Photoshop of an installed setup even before full-size prototypes are available?

  4. D.W. Drang says:

    Sorry, Dave, not a Shipstone. That was my first thought, too.

    Essentially, it’s capacitors powered by a (propane or natural gas) fuel cell. So, no, not “off the grid”, either.

  5. MadRocketScientist says:

    The innards are pretty basic, standard fuel cell setup. It’s the inks and how they move electrons across the plates that intrigues me. And they do have some prototypes working right now at some corporate test sites.

    I don’t think these are really meant for backyard use as much as corporate or neighborhood use. A small community could invest in a handfull of these and use a hydrocarbon source (say, tap a landfill or pig farm, install a propane tank farm, etc) to form a mini electrical co-op. I suppose if they can use any hydrocarbon, you could brew biogas at home and use one that way, not sure.

    Still, anything that can cleanly create electricity and reduce the load on the grid overall is a good thing.

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