
Super-Soaker inventor may have solar-powered fuel cell breakthrough - dctoedt
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/shooting-for-the-sun/8268
======
kenjackson
This is like the ultime HN article.

* Born hacker

* Issues of race and oppression

* Entreprenuer spirit

* Issues with patents

* Big companies stifling innovation

Someone should write "Inventors at Work".

~~~
gvb
* Experts tell him it won't work and point out the PhD thesis (or equivalent) that "proves" it... however, he is attacking the problem in a different way that the expert did not expect.

~~~
brianbreslin
Proof that sometimes an outsiders perspective can come at a problem in a novel
and seemingly successful way.

------
rajat
I don't get it. Why isn't Google investing in this along with robot self-
driving cars? Why isn't Khosla investing in this? Or is this the article that
gets them interested?

I don't pretend to have the engineering knowledge to know whether this will
work or not, whether it's snake oil or not, but surely, if an electric sports
car for the rich can get funded, so can this guy. I'm assuming the guy isn't
peddling snake-oil, the circumstances certainly seem to indicate that he's
sincere.

Is it that he needs a super-salesman to the money? Godin, Kawasaki, surely one
of them would step up for the potential for good and profit that is possible
if this technology is feasible.

~~~
krschultz
This sounds to me (mechanical engineer but not in this field) a lot like the
light bulb problem Edison faced.

Until Edison found the proper filament material, he had an empty glass jar
with leads in it and a theory. As soon as he found the proper filament
material, he had an invention that changes the world.

The concept here is great. Heat hydrogen to create differential pressure,
extract ions by forcing it through a membrane, repeat. Note that the key part
of it is the membrane. The primary problem in fuel cells is the same thing -
the membrane.

It becomes basically a materials problem at that point.

That is not to say that it is easy, but that it is different. Once I have a
few square inches of the proper material I no longer have just a proof of
concept or a prototype, I have a full fledged device. The whole issue is
figuring it out once and that might take a long time.

(Sure there are more issues, like extracting water from the fuel cell or
increasing efficiency or lowering cost, but the bulk of it is that first
initial problem.)

It might turn out that whatever it takes to make this membrane is crazy
expensive, and that it doesn't make economic sense. Or maybe it will start out
expensive and it will become cheap like the filament in the lightbult. I don't
know but I do know that he will probably need a heck of a lot more funding
before he can show a proof of concept, and anyone waiting for it to work will
be far to late to get in on the action.

~~~
konad
Edison had that problem? That's curious because Humphrey Davy deomstrated the
filmament lamp to the Royal Society 75 years before Edison was born.

------
hop
He will change the world if he can get 50-60% efficiency. Photovoltaic cells
would be out and parabolic mirrors aimed at a heating elements would take
their place - even better, tubes running under asphalt streets all circulating
water through JTEC heat exchangers.

A huge unmet need is extraction of heat energy at lower temperature
differentials - it could put to use tons of waste energy at industrial plants,
your car exhaust, h20 that leaves current steam generators, etc... The JTEC
has the potential to make use of all this would-be entropy.

~~~
ck2
But what if it's double the efficiency at twice the cost to produce?

It does sound rather more complex than a solar cell.

~~~
cma
Assuming it has the same lifetime/maintenance costs, then the profitability
will be double that of the alternative.

------
Vekz
Could someone explain the differences in acquiring funding as an inventor vs
an entrepreneur? Reason I ask is that I was recently laid off by a failed
startup that had secured and wasted an investment in the amount of 2 million.

After that experience I went on to do some contract work with another early
stage startup. They had no solid idea or vision for a product and had funding
in the amount of 1.5 million.

It is concerning to me that a proven inventor like Johnson, who has a solid
concept, is struggling to pull in his initial 100,000

~~~
dstein
He should disguise his invention as a social network for the energy industry
-- BOOM! instant funding.

~~~
nickpinkston
Haha I think you've got that backwards. It's probably better to make a social
network look green and sell the carbon credits! How that for monetization?!?

~~~
dstein
You nailed it! A social network for carbon credit sharing. Call Sequoia.

~~~
olefoo
I expect to see this very thing funded by this time next week.

Looks like someone else has already proven the market <http://sandbag.org.uk/>

But since they aren't doing it in the bay area it's an easy run for a
motivated team with strong leadership.

------
notmyname
I'm curious about how he stores the hydrogen. Hydrogen is notoriously
difficult to store. How does he keep the indefinite cycle going with hydrogen
in a sealed chamber if the hydrogen is constantly leaching through the walls
of the chamber?

~~~
jhaglund
I don't know....

But since H2 is not the fuel (it is the working fluid, the sun is the fuel)
and as long as the loss is kept within reason, it seems like this could
generate enough energy to do some electrolysis and refill any lost H2.

------
brandonkm
If anyone is interested in reading more about how exactly he invented the
Super Soaker <http://www.isoaker.com/Info/history_supersoaker.html>

~~~
eru
Thanks. You should submit it.

------
stcredzero
_Steam engines—powered predominantly by coal, but also by natural gas, nuclear
materials, and other fuels—generate 90 percent of all U.S. electricity. But
though they have been refined over the centuries, most are still clanking,
hissing, exhaust-spewing machines that rely on moving parts, and so are
relatively inefficient and prone to mechanical breakdown._

Do steam turbines really clank? (I can believe in the hissing part.)

~~~
dctoedt
I don't know about all steam turbines, but for the ones with which I'm
familiar, clanking is a Bad Thing. (Between college and law school I did my
ROTC scholarship payback as a Navy nuclear engineering officer.)

------
gallerytungsten
I find the story very inspiring, but as some others noted, it would be nice to
see a working model of the unit, or at least some pictures.

Now on a more substantial level, the claims of "60% efficiency" and "on part
with coal" claims are interesting and need a little more explanation, in my
opinion. How are these numbers being calculated? We aren't told.

One might guess it's based on a bunch of manufacturing and startup costs,
along with operating costs, for an unknown number of years (probably many)
along with projections about various other future costs. What power levels
will a prototype produce, and how will it be scaled up?

I think the concept sounds promising, but a lot of questions remain to be
answered.

------
russellallen
Well the idea sounds coherent. No idea if it would work or not. It's not a
fuel cell though - its more like a no-moving-parts replacement for a Stirling
engine.

~~~
teilo
Right. He called it a fuel cell because it was the only way he could get past
the funding gatekeepers who dismissed his ideas without properly examining or
understanding them.

~~~
revorad
Yeah sounds similar to Microtechnology rebranding itself as Nanotechnology and
NMR as MRI.

------
tocomment
Speaking of inventors, does anyone know how inventors ever get a foothold? I
had a cool idea for heating swimming pools to ambient air temperature (think
giant heat sinks).

But do I get giant heatsinks built for me to test? How do I find out if this
is already patented? How do I sell it?

~~~
hop
Cover it with an insulated top when not in use. Your pool is colder than
ambient because the top surface is constantly evaporating, leaving behind the
slower moving molecules.

A solar heater would work better (if you have sun) because it will absorb more
energy than ambiant air convected over the same area. And you would need a fan
for a heatsink if its wasn't windy. [http://www.amazon.com/SmartPool-
SunHeater-Above-Ground-Pools...](http://www.amazon.com/SmartPool-SunHeater-
Above-Ground-Pools/dp/B000RQ0RDC)

A way for you to test it would be to do it on a small scale - maybe buy some
copper tube and circulate an aquarium with the water filter pump.

~~~
stcredzero
_Your pool is colder than ambient because the top surface is constantly
evaporating, leaving behind the slower moving molecules._

Sounds like a way to save on air conditioning costs to me. Put a heat
exchanger to the pool and heat your pool while cooling your house.

~~~
ramchip
You could also buy a regular pool heat pump and stick it in your house:

<http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Pool_20Heat_20Sink>

------
jacquesm
Sorry guys, I got there first:

<http://pics.ww.com/v/jacques/renewables/concentrator/>

Patent pending ;)

Yes, I realize there is a lot more to it than that. However, there have been
solar concentrators of all kinds of varieties, I've built a couple of proto-
types the one in the pictures above was one of the more promising ones because
it allows the collector to be stationary.

Interesting tidbit from that experiment, it's quite hard to bond a solar panel
to a cooling surface that can dissipate 800 watts over 100 square centimeters,
whatever you use to bond will melt or dry out and then your solar cells will
self-disassemble. So you will end up with active cooling, which in turn will
give you co-generation (both electricity and heat).

I really hope this guy will succeed, we could do with a bit more radical
thinking in this space.

~~~
catch23
well, I think the real tech isn't the concentrator but the membrane that
converts heat to electricity by forcing ions through a proton-exchange
membrane.

~~~
jacquesm
Yes, of course.

I had a ton of fun building that stuff though. And with co-generation you use
the 'old' tech and use the byproduct (heat) for some other purpose. That way
you can get to very high efficiencies too.

------
tocomment
How would this work? Surely sunlight can't create enough heat to ionize a gas
(creating plasma?).

Why don't the whole hydrogen atoms go through the membrane to the lower
pressure area?

How does he alternate which side is heated? How does he cool the other side?

~~~
gvb
> How would this work? Surely sunlight can't create enough heat to ionize a
> gas (creating plasma?).

He isn't ionizing the gas, he is increasing the gas pressure by heating it.
_"Only instead of using those pressure gradients to move an axle or a wheel,
he’s forcing ions through a membrane."_ See next for why that is important.

> Why don't the whole hydrogen atoms go through the membrane to the lower
> pressure area?

He uses a semi-permeable membrane
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semipermeable_membrane>. _They also have use in
chemical applications such as batteries and fuel cells._

The membrane blocks the atoms, but allows the ions (protons) through. It
_does_ require a substantial amount of pressure for it to work. That is where
the heat -> pressure comes into effect, and why the reconstituted hydrogen on
the "cold" size has to be compressed and pumped back into the "hot" side.

While this sounds a little like a perpetual motion machine, it isn't because
the sun's heat is adding the energy that is being extracted via the electrons.

> How does he alternate which side is heated? How does he cool the other side?

He heats one side and cools one side, no alternating. The heating (and
cooling) cause a pressure differential, which drives the reaction via the
semi-permeable membrane.

\---

I suspect there are some pretty substantial challenges remaining before this
becomes a sizable / viable energy source.

It sounds like it is related to proton exchange fuel cells, except instead of
using the catalyst + oxidant to drive the reaction, it is using pressure.

Refs:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell#Proton_exchange_fuel_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell#Proton_exchange_fuel_cells)

[http://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-efficiency/alternative-
fu...](http://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-efficiency/alternative-fuels/fuel-
cell2.htm)

~~~
tocomment
So if the sunlit side is under higher pressure, how do the hydrogen atoms
return to that side? I must still be missing something.

Also, is there really enough hydrogen ionizing at 400C?

~~~
gvb
> So if the sunlit side is under higher pressure, how do the hydrogen atoms
> return to that side? I must still be missing something.

The article says it is compressed in order to move it back to the high
pressure side.

> Also, is there really enough hydrogen ionizing at 400C?

I don't believe (traditional) ionization is occurring. My guess is that it
works at the molecular level like reverse osmosis works with salt water to
form fresh water. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_osmosis> The
dissociation of the hydrogen atoms into protons and electrons is through heat
and pressure, facilitated by the semi-permeable membrane.

Note that the membrane is key and is very unique. _Johnson [...] proved he
could make a ceramic membrane capable of withstanding temperatures above 400
degrees Celsius._ A semi-permeable plastic membrane is non-trivial. A semi-
permeable _ceramic_ membrane that passes protons, strips electrons, and blocks
hydrogen atoms while running at 400^C has to be _really, really_ tough to do.

------
sasvari
I remember reading about the JTEC a couple of years ago, but I am very curious
to see an actual _working_ version of it.

Could be the hottest thing around ...

~~~
brc
Right - surely they can get a scale model of it working. I take all these
announcements with a grain of salt now. We're always reading about these
breakthroughs, then nothing. I mean, if he had even a small working prototype,
he could be on the news and gaining investors and traction.

~~~
kylemathews
Yeah, I'm a bit suspicious. Google returns nothing right now.

~~~
haliax
<http://www.johnsonems.com/?q=node/2>

------
sliverstorm
> At 13, he bolted a discarded lawn-mower engine onto a homemade go-cart

Hmm... Getting that to work is quite a feat for a kid. Lawn-mower engines
usually cannot be operated sideways. I wonder if he was lucky enough to have a
2-stroke motor, or if he managed to keep the engine vertical?

------
noibl
One thing that confused me about this was the claim that it might selectively
advantage solar electricity production.

I can understand that the system might work at small scale, making it
available for deployment in preference to photovoltaics. But at large scale,
surely the efficiency boost that comes from avoiding turbines would be as good
for coal-fired and gas-fired generators as for anything else.

------
sfard
Assuming a proof-of-concept is developed, this guy has just managed to create
a more-efficient way of converting heat into electricity. If that's the case,
that technology could be applied to other heat-generation plants (nuclear,
coal, gas), so those technologies would hypothetically still be more
efficient. Am I missing something?

------
Detrus
I heard this story about two years ago, not a lot of new information about the
fuel cell here.

------
olegkikin
Guys, we should put our money together and invest into this.

------
Blunt
I want to work with this guy!

------
brc
The Lesson here is : if you do make a pile of cash, lock some of it away so
that you and your family have an (almost) assured retirement plan.

~~~
brc
I don't understand the downvoting, so I'll make my position clear. If you read
the article, the guy is now in financial trouble because the super soaker
profits have largely dried up, and he has had to put other plans on hold.

What I'm saying is, if you find yourself in the situation where you have a big
win, you need to lock away some of that to keep you in retirement. Then, you
can go onto your next venture knowing that, if it doesn't work out, at least
you won't fall on financial hard times. I honestly don't know why this is so
downvoted, so perhaps someone can explain it to me.

~~~
guynamedloren
There is nothing in the article that states he has not put away enough money
for retirement, nor that he could not retire right this moment if he wanted
to. For all you know, he could have $100MM in bank, ensuring that his family
is well-off for generations to come. The article doesn't delve into his
personal finances at all - it merely states that the Super Soaker profits are
not able to fund his research as much as they once did.

~~~
arethuza
From the article:

"There was a time in my life, he says, when I was independently wealthy. But
that time has passed"

Sounds to me like he has sunk a lot of his capital into his ongoing research
projects.

