backtop

Print E-mail del.icio.us 61 comment(s) - last by TheGreek.. on Aug 29 at 9:40 PM

UTC Power PureCell Model 200  (Source: UTC Power)
Fujitsu looks to fuel cells for green power

Fuel cell technology should be familiar to regular DailyTech readers. Automotive manufacturers have rallied behind the technology to bring clean and efficient vehicles to the public and mobile manufacturers look to fuel cells to power mobile devices for extended periods of time.

Fujitsu is taking a slightly different approach with its latest fuel cell endeavor. The company hails itself as the first to install a hydrogen fuel cell for power in Silicon Valley. The fuel cell was installed in Fujitsu's Sunnyvale campus and provides power for the on-site data center.
The fuel cell used by Fujitsu is a UTC Power PureCell Model 200 (200 kilowatts of assured power) which is California Air Resources Board (CARB 07) compliant. The unit produces 35 percent less CO2 per mW-hour, saves 800,000 gallons of water per year and 4,000 pounds less NOx per year than traditional power plants.

"Our real-world use of the hydrogen fuel cell is a clear demonstration of the ability of corporations to make a significant and financially responsible investment in reducing harmful impacts on the environment, with the ultimate goal of reversing global warming," said Tetsuo Urano, head of American operations for Fujitsu America."

According to Fujitsu, the hydrogen fuel cell provides 50 percent of the power necessary to cool the data center and computer labs.

"Fujitsu is a model for how large organizations can work through the process of understanding their energy requirements, researching the best solution to meet their fiscal requirements and their environmental impact goals, and then making a solid, long-term investment in a clean, efficient, cost-effective energy system," said UTC Power President Jan van Dokkum.

Fujitsu claims that the fuel cell will pay for itself within 3.5 years and will have an estimated lifespan of 15 years.

Comments     Threshold


This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled
Interesting
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 8/20/2007 9:54:58 AM , Rating: 4
Very interesting application. Very interesting indeed. I will keep an eye on this, it could lead to further interesting applications.




RE: Interesting
By omnicronx on 8/20/2007 10:03:17 AM , Rating: 2
Just think if every business got one or two of these in north america, think of how much power could be saved. If it makes its worth back in four years from now just imagine the efficiency that could be achieved in 5-10 years! exciting!
Hybrid vehicles can only do so much, its time to implement designs like this where it counts!


RE: Interesting
By A5un on 8/20/2007 10:38:28 AM , Rating: 2
Better yet, why not make these into power plants? I mean this little thing here is basically a power generator. So what's stopping them from building a huge one to generate enough electricity for an entire city, at much less the harmful by-products?

Or, we could have one at every home? I don't know the cost of this thing, but if it pays itself back in less than 4 yrs, I think it's a worthwhile investment.


RE: Interesting
By FITCamaro on 8/20/2007 10:58:55 AM , Rating: 2
Thats what I'm wondering. What does one of these cost?


RE: Interesting
By omnicronx on 8/20/2007 11:17:46 AM , Rating: 2
Is hydrogen still highly flammable/explosive in this form? if so an entire powerplant full of these things could make a hefty explosion. Would be a nice 4th of july show though ;)
I wonder too how much one of these costs, but if it takes 3-4 years to make the money for it back, it can not be that cheap.


RE: Interesting
By TomZ on 8/20/2007 11:25:13 AM , Rating: 2
Hydrogen in this form is extremely flammable.

http://www-safety.deas.harvard.edu/services/hydrog...

But so is natural gas, gasoline, and other fuels that are used safely on a widespread basis with proper handling/controls.


RE: Interesting
By geddarkstorm on 8/20/2007 1:17:28 PM , Rating: 2
Hydrogen is very volatile, but far safer than natural gas, oil, or gasoline (it doesn't burn nearly as well, and isn't nearly as explosive). If you treat it with the same precautions, there's nothing to worry about.


RE: Interesting
By TheGreek on 8/29/2007 9:35:52 PM , Rating: 1
So the ex-captain of the Valdez can handle it?


RE: Interesting
By othercents on 8/20/2007 11:24:46 AM , Rating: 2
Actually everyone should re-read the article. Fujitsu isn't the first to have a fuel cell generator, but the first in Silicon Valley. I saw three of these next to my hotel in San Diego when I was there 2 weeks ago. It was the Sheraton Marina Hotel.

I'm almost certain that there are plenty of other locations that are using this.

Other


RE: Interesting
By TomZ on 8/20/2007 11:29:02 AM , Rating: 2
I agree, and I would add to that, why does Fujitsu get all the credit for this? After all, UTC Power is responsible for developing this technology, and all Fujitsu was to purchase it.


RE: Interesting
By roastmules on 8/20/2007 11:50:42 AM , Rating: 2
The Sheraton in Parsippany, NJ (nify place, looks like a castle) has one like this as well. They had a placard indicating that it ran on natural gas to get the hydrogen from.

So, in reality, even though part of it is a fuel cell, it runs on natural gas. Natural gas is fairly cheap, safe, easy to transport, and available in most places. Where else can you get Hydrogen cheaply?


RE: Interesting
By masher2 (blog) on 8/20/2007 11:43:39 AM , Rating: 2
> "why not make these into power plants? ...what's stopping them from building a huge one to generate enough electricity for an entire city..."

Hydrogen isn't a source of energy...its an energy carrier only. The source of the energy is in the process that generates the hydrogen (normally steam reformulation of natural gas).


RE: Interesting
By Dfere on 8/20/2007 12:53:21 PM , Rating: 2
Agreed. My company is one of the biggest hydrogen and oxygen suppliers in the world.

We rip it out of the air using electricity (sort of). It is humorous to me to see people think it is a free source of energy. Our biggest cost of operations is ... electricity. And a lot of "clean coal technology" uses hydrogen we "make" as well which costs .....electricity.

I can only wonder when this will be factored into "climate change" calculations........

I didn't know of the water savings- that is truly impressive. Shame, I live on Lake Erie and was hoping for a future economic advantage in residing here.....


RE: Interesting
By geddarkstorm on 8/20/2007 1:54:55 PM , Rating: 1
You have to mine to get natural gas and oil, and you have to put in a ton of energy/materials to refine oil into a usable form. If Hydrogen is only an energy carrier, so is oil and natural gas, coal and anything else. There is nothing we use that gives us more energy/resources than we put in. It's just easier to keep track of all the numbers when you are dealing primarily with straight electricity (put electricity in to split water, get it back when you reform it), rather than having to keep track of all the materials and human energy used to do physical mining verse what we get back from what we mine (and we can continue to waste more energy in mining than we get back because the earth is so abundant in resources that we can ignore it). Seriously, "mining" hydrogen from water or natural gas is no different than how we have to refine ores to separate our the materials we want from all the contaminants. With hydrogen, the contaminants are oxygen or carbon (depending on the source). Biofuel has to be harvested from plants and converted into a usable fuel. There is no difference between any of these sources, none of these are "energy sources" verses "energy carriers", they all have to be converted from another raw source.

Now that new iron doped titanium oxide nanotubes are coming out with much higher photoelectric efficiencies for splitting water and in the visible light range, the need for harvesting hydrogen from natural gas will be all but gone. And heck, we can get hydrogen as simple biproducts of other necessary processes or simple biological processes. From that PureCell site:
Free fuel

That’s what anaerobic digester gas (ADG) is for the PureCell™ Model 200 solution. ADG is a byproduct of the wastewater treatment process and contains methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases. UTC Power fuel cells currently generate 2.8 megawatts of premium quality power using this fuel. That equates to over 6 million kilowatt-hours of proven application experience. The PureCell™ Model 200 power solution is the first ADG fuel cell tested by the EPA through its stringent Environmental Technology Verification program. For information on the performance characteristics of the PureCell™ solution with the ADG option, please visit www.epa.gov/etv.

Hydrogen is a fuel, if we can get it from solar or biological driven sources it is an energy source like any other fuel we use. Unless one wants to call all of those energy carriers. But either way, there is no difference between hydrogen and them than in how we use them to get energy out. If you want to be super stringent, all physical materials are only energy carriers, as only reactions of said materials are energy sources.

Sorry, it just bugs me that people try to make a distinction which doesn't exist as if to discredit the use of hydrogen overall. Even fusion depends on hydrogen, so it seems we're going to be stuck with it unless we find out how to generate energy from fundamental physical properties like the fabric of space or "quantum foam" or whatever other crazy theoretical there is.


RE: Interesting
By TomZ on 8/20/2007 2:56:16 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
There is nothing we use that gives us more energy/resources than we put in.

I'm not sure what you mean by that - it almost sounds like you are saying that it takes more energy to acquire/refine/deliver something like gasoline than it actually delivers. But clearly that is not the case - so what do you mean exactly?


RE: Interesting
By geddarkstorm on 8/20/2007 3:55:30 PM , Rating: 2
Actually it is absolutely the case--resources and human energy add up and must be factored in. The second law of thermal dynamics, Entropy, stipulates that this is the case, and investigating all the resources required shows as well. Mining resources doesn't take as much obvious energy as electrolysis of hydrogen from water, electricity isn't required in as great amounts, but other resources, metals, chemicals, man hours and food, etc are.

When you build a house, you create a net disorder in the environment even though you've constructed this incredibly ordered building. This is the same for acquiring energy from fuels. Gas and natural gas give us a lot of power back, but the overall cumulative energy and resource loss in getting and refining these fuels is greater than the energy they contain (which we can't even use to 100% efficiency, also due to Entropy). Everyone just ignores the resource and human energy cost to get these fuels since it is very hard to keep track of (whereas strict kilowatt hours is easy), and because the earth has abundant resources left to spend in the acquiring of these fuels. But we still lose more than we get back.

Either way, my point was that you have to refine hydrogen to use it; but you also have to do that for every single other fuel we use, so saying hydrogen is somehow inferior as an energy source or energy carrier (whatever hydrogen is, the others are as well) to these other fuels because hydrogen has to be refined seems incorrect and counter productive to myself.

The interesting way of looking at it, at least when we use natural gas or oil to produce hydrogen, is really you are using natural gas or oil in a new way, instead of combusting it. In this case, hydrogen isn't really the fuel, it's still natural gas or oil; which I think is what Masher is trying to say, and where that whole "it's an energy carrier not an energy source like oil" idea comes from (which is believe is a totally incorrect way to look at it). Yet, turning natural gas or oil into hydrogen and then using that hydrogen is a more efficient energy process pound per pound of natural gas/oil than strict combustion and energy production through steam turbines. Moreover, gaining hydrogen from other sources, such as biological fermentation and solar energy to split water is a different issue. Still, either way, we may refine hydrogen from oil, but we still refine usable oil from crude oil, so hydrogen isn't an energy carrier while oil is an energy source. They are fuels, one in the same.

In the end, you need hydrogen to do fusion, which is the gold standard everyone wants, so we better learn how to use it, store it, and transport it effectively if we ever want to get away from fossil fuels. In the meantime, fuel cells are awesome and very promising.


RE: Interesting
By masher2 (blog) on 8/20/2007 4:05:49 PM , Rating: 2
> "Gas and natural gas give us a lot of power back, but the overall cumulative energy and resource loss in getting and refining these fuels is greater than the energy they contain"

The early use of petroleum began with "oil springs" where there was no drilling or pumping required-- just stoop down and collect the oil in a pot. Do you seriously suggest that the amount of energy required to do that was more than that obtained by burning the oil thus gathered?

Even today, the best Saudi wells only require a few cents per barrel of lifting costs. Refining requires some energy inherent in the petroleum...but thats not required to use the energy in that oil, its simply a matter of placing it in a more convenient form.

Honestly, I'm shocked that someone can so seriously propound so obviously illogical a statement. Yes, the entropy of a closed system must increase. But the earth is not a closed system. The earth-sun system comes closer to being such...and the energy of the sun is what ultimately provides the energy in our fossil fuels.


RE: Interesting
By geddarkstorm on 8/20/2007 4:10:29 PM , Rating: 2
That is a good point, I didn't think about that fully. It's true though that we still don't get as much energy back from it than what went into its production--it's just we didn't have to put in that original energy to produce it. Perhaps there in lies the distinction.

But the entropy of the entire universe has to rise for any spontaneous reaction, not simply a closed system. In fact, you can increase the order of a closed system, but you must sacrifices more order of the outside universe system to do so. That's what Entropy means.