
Bloom Box: What is it and how does it work? - chanux
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2010/0222/Bloom-Box-What-is-it-and-how-does-it-work
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pbhjpbhj
From the linked article:

> _It’s a collection of fuel cells – skinny batteries – that use oxygen and
> fuel to create electricity with no emissions.

Fuel cells are the building blocks of the Bloom Box. They’re made of sand that
is baked into diskette-sized ceramic squares and painted with green and black
ink. Each fuel cell has the potential to power one light bulb. The fuel cells
are stacked into brick-sized towers sandwiched with metal alloy plates.

The fuel cell stacks are housed in a refrigerator-sized unit – the Bloom Box.
Oxygen is drawn into one side of the unit, and fuel (fossil-fuel, bio-fuel, or
even solar power can be used) is fed into the other side. The two combine
within the cell and produce a chemical reaction that creates energy with no
burning, no combustion, and no power lines._

So you feed in fuel and oxygen and it outputs electricity. Wow!?!

How do they get away with claiming there are no emissions if you're using
fossil fuel to power it? As presented here it smacks of fraud.

~~~
andrewcooke
probably not fraud, just a stupid reporter. from this and the other article
it's pretty clear that this is some kind of catalysed oxidation. it's
effectively "burning" the fuel in a way that efficiently generates
electricity, which is neat, but means that carbon dioxide will be one of the
byproducts (and this was mentioned in the earlier article). so that part of
the article ("no emissions") is simply wrong (note that it's not a direct
quote - it's background from the journalist, who was probably copying from
info on a hydrogen fuel cell, not understanding that hydro _carbon_ fuelled
cells burn carbon and so generate carbon dioxide).

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teilo
Horribly bad reporting. Again, the "no emissions" claim, a claim that seems to
originate entirely in the mind of the reporters, because Boom is not making
this claim. "Low emissions" yes. All fuel cells produce emissions. Just less
than combustion for the same energy output.

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Roridge
It almost feels like it should be a hoax. The Bloom Box appears to be genius
and has massive funding and backing, but the web site is so cryptic and it has
come out of no where, I keep thinking someone is going to say "gotcha" at any
moment.

~~~
tdoggette
That's my default position on something like this. I'm waiting for someone who
knows what they're talking about to say "yeah, this does what it says on the
tin."

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ugh
In what way is this better than or different from micro-CHP
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_combined_heat_and_power>)?

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ableal
This is about as fact-free as the original TV puff piece. The slashdot
discussion yesterday produced more informative comments; e.g. this one is
worth reading:
[http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1559256&cid...](http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1559256&cid=31236992)

