Bloom Box

[Planman1954]

I was wondering if anyone saw the "60 Minutes" show last Sunday on the Bloom Box? It is a small unit that the maker claims could sell for $3000.00 and be able to power a single home. It requires a fuel source, which they said could be gasoline, natural gas, solar, or whatever.
This lead me to my question. I wonder if someone here could come up with a companion unit to burn our wood scraps to produce a biomass of some sort to power the thing. It would be great for us to be able to power our homes....and vehicles?... with electricity. I was just a dreamin'....and a wonderin.'

[Jasperfield]

I've been watching via some of the financial news sites. I don't have a TV. Wouldn't it be great if you could power it with diesel or coal.

I hope the fellow does well with it.

[LAZERDAN]

Here it is                      Hope it works      Lazerdan

[pineywoods]

It's a fuel cell with a reformer up front. The reformer breaks the fuel into hydrogen and some by-products, then the hydrogen is combined with oxygen from the air in a fuel cell to produce electricity and water. When used in conjunction with solar panels, operating costs are quite attractive, solar panels by day and natural gas fuel cell at night. The killer is up-front start up costs. I think BMW had one mounted in a test vehicle.

[breederman]

Planman, My wife and I talked about that very thing. Exciting technology for sure.It could fit in with an idea that Treecycler is kicking around,I met him Sunday, That boy is thinking outside of the box.

[Planman1954]

Pineywoods:
They talked about the fuel a little in the show....solar, natural gas, or whatever to power the bloom box. I just wondered if we could somehow use cellulose like that plant near here that uses some kind of acid or mold (I can't remember where it is) to break down the plant matter, or trees, and produce alcohol. That could, in turn, power the machine. Also, they did talk about getting the cost down to $3000.00 for the average homeowner to be able to afford it.

[pineywoods]

It all boils down to one factor --cost--. The Bloom box and it's kin have been available for some time, but if you want to make electricity from natural gas, it's a bunch cheaper (read more practical) to use the gas to power a conventional internal combustion engine driving a generator. The working installations you can bet involve a bunch of government subsidies and R and D write-offs. As for making alcohol from wood chips, every working example i know of uses a wood gas generator to produce methane+carbon monoxide, then uses the fischer tropish process to make alky or diesel fuel. The equipment to do that uses high temps (350 *C ) and pressures in the 3000 to 5000 psi range.  Again, the most practical way to make electricity from wood chips is a wood gas generator running a conventional genset. Got the motor, got the generator, have the stuff to make a woodgas generator, it's all still in the engineering analysis stage (sitting around thinking about it)