What makes Blooms fuel cell different than others?”
Venture Capital Bloom Energy Claims a New Fuel Cell Technology February 24, 2010, 5:10 am Bloom A Silicon Valley company is claiming a breakthrough in a decades-old quest to develop fuel cells that can supply affordable and relatively clean electricity. Google, Bank of America, Wal-Mart and other large corporations have been testing the devices, which will be formally introduced on Wednesday. The start-up, Bloom Energy, has raised about $400 million from investors and spent nearly a decade developing a new variety of solid oxide fuel cell, considered the most efficient but most technologically challenging fuel-cell technology, The New York Times’s Todd Woody reports. K. R. Sridhar, Bloom’s co-founder and chief executive, said devices made by his company were generating electricity at a cost of 8 to 10 cents a kilowatt hour, using natural gas. That is lower than commercial electricity prices in some parts of the country. “We got into this business to make affordable electricity, not fue
What makes Bloom’s fuel cell different than others is that it’s solid oxide versus man-made polymers, which are expensive and have catalysts on them that wear out. Bloom’s solid oxide is based on zirconium. As Rodgers described it, it’s very much like a ceramic material made into a membrane so thin that you can see through it. It’s that membrane that enables the electronic exchange, turning the biofuel or natural gas into electricity.
What makes Bloom’s fuel cell different than others is that it’s solid oxide versus man-made polymers, which are expensive and have catalysts on them that wear out. Bloom’s solid oxide is based on zirconium. As Rodgers described it, it’s very much like a ceramic material made into a membrane so thin that you can see through it. It’s that membrane that enables the electronic exchange, turning the biofuel or natural gas into electricity. EBay acknowledged last fall that it had a series of five servers installed and in use at its San Jose campus. According to a report from the analyst group Fuel Cell Today, eBay says the installation generates more power than the 3,000 solar panels installed at its headquarters.
