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Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Could be Clean Energy Commercial Success Silicon Valley’s Bloom Energy recently unveiled a solid oxide fuel cell that can be powered either by fossil fuel or renewable sources and is cleaner and more reliable than other fuel cells. Thousands of cells can be placed in a refrigerator-sized box the company is calling the Bloom Energy Server—with each box capable of producing 100 KW of power.
That quantity is sufficient to power 100 average-sized homes.
The technology has attracted the interest of companies from Wal-Mart to Google Inc. The Los Angeles Times reports that EBay has been using a biogas-powered 500 KW version of the system at its San Jose offices to reduce its grid energy requirements by 15 percent.
The individual fuel cells are thin, ceramic, and only a few inches square. They produce energy by combining air with fuel in an electrochemical process that does not involve combustion.
Bloom’s Chief Executive, K.R. Sridhar, founded the company in 2001 after conducting research for NASA’s Mars program on using solar energy and water to produce air and fuel. While the Bloom Energy Server’s long-term reliability is yet un-tested, the integrated package is ahead of many competitors in terms of its readiness for commercial implementation. |
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