Bloom Energy & Bloom Box
- Details
- Category: Science
- Published on Monday, 22 February 2010 09:52
If you read the news today, you may have heard rumblings about Bloom Energy. The 8 year-old company, Bloom Energy, is finally emerging from the shadows with the Bloom Box.
The buzz about the company and its new technology product called Bloom Box is so big because they were in the tonight’s issue of 60 minutes. 60 minutes showed a look inside to as they call it “The Bloom Box”.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010 will be the big day of Bloom Energy. They will hold a press conference this week. They operated for 8 years and raised around 400.000.000 million dollars from various sources.
If you want to see what the invention looks like watch the videos embedded below.
Bloom Energy
Bloom Energy is the company behind this latest breakthrough fuel cell technology called Bloom Box. Bloom Energy installs their fuel cells in company buildings and sells them electricity. The company was started in 2002 by Dr. K. R. Sridhar. who is a scientist by training.
I guess lots of people aren't familiar with fuel cells. Let me try to explain it. A fuel cell is an electrochemical energy conversion device. It produces electricity from external supplies of fuel (on the anode side) and oxidant (on the cathode side). These react in the presence of an electrolyte. Generally, the reactants flow in and reaction products flow out while the electrolyte remains in the cell. Fuel cells can operate virtually continuously as long as the necessary flows are maintained. So, the fuel cells are a lot like a chemical battery that combines methods to create a reaction and in the end it delivers electricity.
Many companies developed fuel cells, however, fuel cells weren't able to break into the mainstream. Because fuel cells were so expensive.
What is Bloom Box?
Bloom Energy’s Bloombox Fuel Cell is simply a revolution. Think about a box that consists of a stack of ceramic disks coated with green and black "inks". These ceramic disks are separated by cheap metal plates. Oxygen and methane is fed in, the whole thing is heated up to 1,000 Celsius, and electricity comes out. Bloom estimates that a box filled with 64 ceramic disks can produce enough juice.
{module 104}We can't say that the Bloom Box is cheap. The box is far too expensive. However, some major companies like FedEx, Google and eBay have already started using the boxes. It has said that eBay has were installed 5 boxes 9 months ago and has already saved $100.000 in electricity costs. According to some sources, eBay even claims that the boxes generate more power than the 3,000 solar panels at its headquarters. Another company Google, which is big search engine, has been using 4 Bloom Boxes for the last 18 month. They were Bloom Energy’s first customer.
Of course, fuel cells aren't new and they are still expensive. But Bloom seems to be able to prove that its box can produce energy at a cheaper rate than other power sources.
The Bloom Box is real and Bloom Energy will hold a press conference this week. There are still a lot of open questions including will the Bloom Box ever be affordable for you and me.
What do you think? What’s your opinion about Bloom Box? Share your opinion in the comment section below.
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It is really exciting! Thanks for posting the videos.
This is really great technology. It's the kind of energy innovation that we need. I would want to one of these! :)
Don't get super excited. They're in the business of making low cost fuel cells.
So is it better on the environment somehow too?
