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Photos: Fujitsu unveils king-size fuel cell

Posted August 18, 2007 5:30 PM

From CNET News.com:

Electronics giant inaugurates 200-kilowatt hydrogen fuel cell that will provide electricity as well as heat to buildings on its Sunnyvale campus. A proton exchange membrane (PEM) hydrogen fuel cell, king-size. Fujitsu inaugurated this fuel cell at its Sunnyvale, Calif., campus on Friday. The fuel cell sits in the parking lot and looks like a pair of giant green dumpsters. Made by UTC Power, the fuel cell will produce 200 kilowatts of power, which is enough to power half of the cooling needed in Fujitsu's data center. The heat harvested from the reactions required to turn hydrogen into electricity will be used by Fujitsu in the buildings too. Right now, the fuel cell system is 50 percent efficient. That puts it on par with conventional power plants; with conventional systems, over half of the power gets lost in transmission lines or as waste heat before it gets to your house. By capturing more heat, the efficiency of the fuel cell can be raised to 85 percent, says UTC.

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Power-User

Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Bolingbrook Illinois, a southwest suburb of Chicago.
Posts: 367
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Re: Photos: Fujitsu unveils king-size fuel cell

08/20/2007 8:27 AM

Does this great efficiency include the (WAG) 60% efficiency of the generation and compression/transportation of the hydrogen? What about the efficiency of the inverter?

Hydrogen technology is wonderful, but until we can come up with a safe, efficient, and practical way to produce the hydrogen, we're kidding not just ourselves, but our funding, also.

Hydrolysis with surplus capacity from wind, solar, tidal, or geothermal generation plants? Large adsorption chillers for chilled water sales instead of cooling towers? Using waste heat to dry crops, distill ethanol, drying paper or textiles, replacing fans in package AC units with thermal draft cooling towers? Considering that heat is the net result of nearly everything we use energy for, a means of using the waste heat would be the breakthrough that is needed, not just financially, but also for a reduction of global warming.

Great to be able to use hydrogen, but we need a way to get it efficiently before we get too enthused about it.

RichH

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