The big dogs of hydronics are getting into the H2 game...

Mark Eatherton1

Doing research for my December article and came upon this interesting tidbit of information...

http://www.viessmann.de/web/germany/de_publish.nsf/Content/Ansprechpartner%5CSHKPresse%5CSHKWeitereThemen%5CInnovative+technology+for+generating+power+and+heat

Buderus is partnering up with IDATECH out of Idaho for a similar unit.

Times, they are a changin'...

ME

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Unknown

Strange?

That link doesn't seem to be working anymore. I've found that these Germans are pretty tight lipped regarding their beta unit but not exactly sure why.

I've known about Big V's development of fuel cell technology for about a year now. When we see a breakthrough in fuel cells I wouldn't be surprised if it came from these guys. Can anybody really doubt that a company such as Viessmann has the ability to overcome pricing objections to systems that can run so environmentally friendly?


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Jason Horner

These guys have some residential demonstration programs underway...

http://www.fct.ca/

Wayco Wayne_2

how does

A fuel cell work?

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Mike T., Swampeast MO

Here's a Link

From a fun website.

Fuel Cells

joel_20

Fuel cells

Valiant boilers and GE both have deals with Plugpower of N.Y
Viessmann had fuel cell prototypes on display at ISH 01
Ibelieve Buderous had drawings as well but can't remember???

Mark Eatherton1

The problem with fuel cells...

if you can't use most of the thermal output of the cell, its electrical efficiency suffers greatly.

If its being used on grid all the time to produce electricty to sell back to the utility, you'd better have one heck of a continuous thermal load, or its not worth the effort. Guess someones going to have to come out with a high efficiency absorption chiller to make it work...

If its being used off grid, the economics suck. That coupled with the fact that the main component will need to be replaced after only 5 years of operation, and the unit as a whole only has a 10 year life expectancy, I think theres going to be some trouble marketing it, unless of course were talking environmental crisis management, in which case all bets are off...

ME

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Unknown

I didn't see any Buderus drawings

at ISH. The RPA's seminar was superficial.

MARK!!! Where did you go? What did you think of the fuel cell seminar in Boston?

Gary

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Mark Eatherton1

Gary...

You used an email address that I never use. If you need to get a hold of me, use the e-mail address that is tied to this post. I thought the seminar on HFC's was somewhat lackluster. Lots of show, but no GO. They were dropping some big time names, like Buderus, and the US Army, but when it came to practical applications, they suffer they same problems all the others do. Where the heck are you going to put all them "free" btu's?

I can see a future potential, but its going to require a COMPLETE rethinking of the way we build and heat our homes.

My last article of 12 in Contracors magazine On systems of the past and the future will address those needs. In the mean time, I'll stick with my high efficiency condensing appliances.

As for the dead link, I don't know what happened. I googled 'viessmann hydrogen fuel cells' and it directed me (2nd page) to a viessmann web site. The link is still there, it just doesn't work anymore. Maybe Herald Prell saw my post and called the big V and told them to yank the plug on it or something...:-)

ME

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Unknown

Look foreward to your new article

Seriously now,,, Where the heck did they hide that link & why? I was going to use that stuff and now it's gone. Did you print it out? I googled it too last night. Should we call a Crown Heights affair?

Sneaky Germans:-)

BTW, sorry for your old e.mail address. My bad.

G.

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Steve_56

Fossil fuels

are still feeding fuel cells. Until they come up with an efficient way to produce raw H2. Although bringing fuel cells into the mainstream is one step, I hope they're spending some of that R&D $$ on H2 generation from solar, etc.

Constantin

Commercialization Realities

Here are my two cents on the fuel cell topic...

The fuel cells with the most promise are the SOFC variety. Unfortunately, I doubt they will be able to scale them down to a level where they'll fit into a house (i.e. smaller than a 120 gal water tank) and still meet a significant amount of the energy requirements. PlugPower, IMHO, is targeting the wrong market and is generating a lot of buzz for no reason that makes sense to me.

Waste heat is a concern. Perhaps one could use the ground as a thermal battery as Mark Eatherton has done with GSHPs, where summer heat on pavers is deposited via the snowmelt system back into the ground. I wonder how good of a battery the ground is though... and will the heat still be there, several months later?

Next, let's look at the economics. I will go out on a limb and challenge any homeowner and most commercial clients to make energy more cost efficiently than the grid they're tied to on a baseline basis (i.e. peakers need not apply). The transportation charges for electricity and gas are usually such that generating electricity from gas does not make sense. As best as I can tell, highly efficient local means of generating electricity like microturbines, fuel cells, etc. are nothing more than a threat to diesel gensets.

The main reason that people go with fuel cells, gensets, or microturbines is because they have mission-critical applications... one installer had a casino client whose revenue would be severely crimped if it had to close due to a power outage. Other folks install them because they have special contracts with the utilities to cut them off once certain load limits are met on the grid. The peaker allows them to limp along until the grid power is restored. Etc. None of these applications are for base-loads.

Kaiser Permanente in CA and elsewhere, which use SOFC's as a primary energy source for all their mission critical systems. In this case, the grid is the backup to the SOFC. IIRC, mission critical stuff at Logan Airport runs off of locally-made power as well. But neither entity does this to save money on energy, they're fully aware that they're spending extra because they want it to be dependable.

The truely revolutionary development on the horizon is the combined-cycle SOFC fuel cell and turbine systems that may achieve electrical efficiencies of 75%+. These fuel cells don't have to run on fossil fuels, they can be perfectly happy with ethanol or methanol, IIRC. However, such combined-cycle facilities are surely not going to fit into anything less than the most egregious of trophy homes, at least for the forseeable future.

Seattle Nick

Poop power fuel cell...

Hey Constantin, here a couple updates on that local fuel cell if you have not seen them already. I have not heard if the thing makes any power yet.....

How the heck do you make these addresses into clickable links?!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5335635

http://dnr.metrokc.gov/wtd/fuelcell/0408FuelCellFlyer.pdf

jerry scharf_2

Not sure I agree with you fully on the power efficiency

Constantin,

Getting practical use out of continuous heat generation without massive buffering is an unsolved problem, IMO. It's the same problem as solar collector sizing.

As for power generation, I too prefer the SOFC units. The current downsides to them are the low integer number of times you can start/stop them before failure.

As for their efficiency, If you look at a gas turbine, which is the most reasonable comparison IMO, they get in the low 60s for efficiency. SOFCs look like they will run in the mid to high 50s. If you add the canonical 40% transmission loss, the gas turbine now looks like high 30s efficiency.

Also, living in California, I am a bit sensative to large energy providers manipulating electric costs by taking plants off line "for maintenance." I still have risk with the gas availability/cost, but it's one less ball to keep an eye on.

As for handling H2 directly rather than methane, I can't possibly imagine this being done safely. Given the little I know about methane delivery, no one's getting near my house with a hydrogen pipe!

jerry

Constantin

Good Points, Jerry!

However, I doubt that transmission losses approach 40% for locally-or even regionally made power. My recollection was something more like 10% on average, with long trunk lines/up/down etc. also eating into the efficiency.

Hence the appeal of gas-turbine units, just spool them up as needed, perfect for peak shaving and the like. They're the furnaces of the electrical world while nukes, coal, and similar plants are more like radiant slabs... slow to adjust. Since turbines depend on a relatively expensive fuel, they are usually the last to be called to service by the local electricity grid.

Gas turbines usually run clean enough to meet most local emissions standards. Parts of CA are a notable exception due to the poor air standards out there. NIMBY is also a big factor, though any industrial facility faces that problem.

I also totally agree that the notion of moving H₂ around the nation via pipelines is a pipe dream indeed. The stuff is so scary compared to other combustible gases, I wonder why so many put so much hope into it.

Lastly, I wish more executives at PG&E as well as the other large utility (Southern Edison?) would be held personally accountable along with the CA legislature for allowing the executives to write the laws and for the representatives to rubber stamp them... forbidding long term contracts and other means of locking in supply while capping resale prices was pure greed and insanity combined. Even the folks at Enron told them that they were rigging their market for abuse!

Constantin

Thanks for the links, Nick

I'll read them tomorrow. Tonight, we celebrate. I'll send you the instructions for links by e-mail, as it wouldn't show here. Go Sox, Yay!

S Milne

Constatine you sir are a sick Puppy

THE FREAKIN SOX HAVE WON THE WORLD SERIES AND YOUR TALKIN FUEL CELLS

jerry scharf_2

not those old SOFC cells

Constantin,

The new stacked flat cell SOFCs are starting to get toward production stable in terms of building them. The old Westinghouse ones worked, but man they were a pain and low efficiency.

Do you know what methanol to water ratio is needed to run the fuel cells up to ~500C? You may not need to distill it near as far as you do for internal combustion. I also never thought about the pH of the discharge, should be much closer to neutral.

In dense areas, there is very poor generation to demand ratios, so a great deal of power travels a long way. Since the 7x24 nature of this directly compares to the loss from long haul transmitted power (it's not a peak demand system.)

The other important thing about localized fuel cell generation (50KW and down) is that it would almost certainly make it under the radar of the NIMBY people. I have enough room in my side yard to do 10KW:) It's the best way I see that's really feasable to get power generation installed in todays climate. Does it cost more to fight for 5 or more years to get a 50+MW plant of any kind in (forget about anything but natural gas,) or to get a few thousand small units slogging away?

I'm worried that adding a second stage turbine to the fuel cell might not go over well with the neighbors. :0 (The city had a cow once before when I tried to put a gas turbine in a sidewalk vault in the middle of downtown. It was my response to their concerns about fuel storage for a diesel generator...)

One interesting problem with local generation is local line service. You need to know who's generating power on the line in question before you can make a line cold for repairs.

Another problem is how to meter it, both for the electricity and natural gas. Net metering sure won't work.

The Califoria PUC has just given PGE/Edison/SMUD/etc. the right to pick around 20 days a year as "exception days" and allowed a surcharge for 6 hours on that day. The surcharge rate? A nice round $.85 per KWh!!! I think I could do quite well selling SOFC electricity at $.135 per KWH base, $.35 peak and $.85 exceptional rate. That's around 7K$/yr for a 10KW setup before gas costs.

The energy world is tipping on end and we've just seen the the start. If you think the hydronics industry is changing, watch out for electricity in the next 10 years. I really feel sorry for the poor sods who look at today's electric price and install resistance electric heat or hot water.

have fun, jerry

Constantin

Well, I haven't worked on fuel cells for a while...

... but I did go to a energy conference in Boston where a professor of fuel cells was giving a talk on the future of the industry.

From what I heard, it is my understanding that the Westinghouse/Siemens tubular system is still quite popular because it has the fewest thermal/manufacturing issues. I had quite a laugh sorting through grant proposals with fellow colleagues for the DoE while I was still at ADL. Some of the technologies were wonderful at assumptions, such as extruding very long, complex, and thin-walled geometrical shapes and not having the stuff go SPROING! when heated.

Anyway, yes, one of the main benefits of a SOFC is that the fuel does not have to be as refined as it has to be for combustion engines. In fact, the SOFC will require less water for the fuel reformer under such conditions.

I'm not that familiar with all the permitting issues that folks may or may not have. What really needs to happen is a requirement for regions of the US to become (on average) energy-neutral in terms of supply and demand. It is in our national interest (security) to ensure that major metropolitan areas like NYC do not depend on thousands of miles of electrical grid to stay alight. Just think how easy it is to cut that grid off.

I like your analogy though. It is possible that the energy world will go to a mass of smaller plants instead of fewer huge ones. A bill requiring folks to start generating locally may just nudge the industry in that direction and make people more aware of their ecological footprint when the generating plant looms over their back yard.

Unknown

Renew

To, Herald Prell

Spooky

No one wants to talk about this subject but the Big V did in fact pull this link off the internet. Strange.

I asked Mr. Nordstrom about this last week and he just smiled & said “they don’t tell me anything.”

The RPA seminar on HFC's was somewhat lackluster. Lots of show, but no go. “Where the heck are you going to put all them "free" BTUs? “

As some here have suggested; I have the ability to piss people off. To answer the specific question I say that I was born to it. I tell the truth. I wear my heart on my sleeve. I’m passionate about my work.

Let’s see the developments of the boiler Mfg’s here out in the open.

Gary

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S Ebels

My gut is rumblin'

It's telling me that the next 10-15 years are going to equal the change in the heating industry when it went from wood/coal stoves to gas and oil central heat. The immovable object (industry inertia) is about to meet the irresistable force (energy costs)

Unknown

The new Hydronics

Throw another log on that fire:) & call the gas supplier.

It' a new era. WAKE UP AMERICANS!!!

Lert's get off of the oil. Send the OPEC back selling their most precioud commodity = SAND.

Buckle up. War is on and we lose soldiers every day for a good cause.

I'd like to see a fund to sponser American Soldiers fighting overseas.

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Constantin

Interesting article in the WSJ on the very subject...

... of energy independence. Stated that the current US electrical energy needs are met to 50% by coal, with the stuff still being in plentiful supply around the globe, but especially within the two developing economies that are going to put the largest strain on global energy resources, India and China.

I suppose that if we managed to get fluidized bed reactors to become commonplace, then the usage of coal units even in sensitive areas like the NE, CA, etc. would make a lot of sense for the base load. The gas-based turbines then would act as peakers.

Until they find a way to get the parasitic losses down, the energy bounty up, fuel cells are not going to do anything but displace diesel gensets that people with uptime requirements have been using since time began. That's a mere five figures of annual sales, not enough to get anyone excited.

As for fuel cell usage in homes and whatnot, I'd like to see the day when the components, investment, etc. becomes worthwhile because of high fuel prices. I doubt it will happen within the next 10 years. Solar hot water heating with evac tubes and buffer tanks looks downright cheap in comparison. Given where PV is going, you may discover that it's cheaper to reduce consumption in the home and install a PV system than to fire up a fuel cell which won't get you away from a fuel dependency, it just reduces it potentially.