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Old 04-19-2011, 02:35 PM   #2
ng2951
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Don't want to burst your bubble on this but fuel cells get pretty expensive very quickly. The newer technology is by far cheaper, but running on hydrogen is technically difficult thing to do.

Hydrogen is bulking and a tiny molecule (I know its an element, but hydrogen usually travels in pairs). It is so tiny it can find its way through most containers. In order to equivalent energy it has to heavily compressed. That works, but it makes the containers somewhat dangerous.

The other option is to use methane which is far easier to handle than hydrogen. In liquid form methane is much warmer than hydrogen and much easier to store and transport.

The neat thing about fuel cells is that the byproduct is mostly water.

I noticed that they are not posting the price of their fuel cells. But when you consider that cell phone charger is $99 for 2 watts, that would mean a 3KW (3000W/2W * $99) would be $148,500. If you look at their 500W unit, which consumes 6.5 l/min of H2, their HydroStik only stores 16 litres of hydrogen. That is just under 3 minutes of runtime.

From what I have read, a 3 KW unit would actually be a couple of order of magnitudes less than $150K. It is a very promising technology, but it gets its fuel from coal, oil (sources of methane or hydrogen), or seawater (nuclear, hydroelectric, etc splitting seawater into hydrogen and oxygen)...
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