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The Bloom Box: An Energy Breakthrough?

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so....this isn't just a fuel cell? you know, those things that have been around for a while?
 
yea well i remember last time 60 minutes had a thing on an indian mechanic dude that claimed he got magic fuel efficiency from a differently shaped cylinder head or something..that came to nothing.

though this bloom thing is getting a lot more funding. so we'll see.
 
0roo0roo said:
yea well i remember last time 60 minutes had a thing on an indian mechanic dude that claimed he got magic fuel efficiency from a differently shaped cylinder head or something..that came to nothing.

though this bloom thing is getting a lot more funding. so we'll see.
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our government gets way more funding than that yet it too knows how to put out a good vaporware product.
 
RoloMather said:
I can believe that based on thermodynamics. I'm guessing they use diesel?
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then where does the fuel go?

long strings of hydrocarbons dont just go nowhere. the whole point of combustion is to break it up. hence why oxygen is needed.
 
0roo0roo said:
yea well i remember last time 60 minutes had a thing on an indian mechanic dude that claimed he got magic fuel efficiency from a differently shaped cylinder head or something..that came to nothing.

though this bloom thing is getting a lot more funding. so we'll see.
Click to expand...

The car companies are hardly dumb enough to pay out millions of dollars for a patent to increase fuel efficiency by a few measly % which no one will notice anyway. They would rather spend the money on something that will increase car sales by a significant amount. Can't say I blame them. They will just wait till the patent expires and then implement it. You'll see it in 10 years or so. Although you'll probably never notice either. When is the last time you looked at the cylinder head before you made a purchase decision on a car?

Besides look at Dodge's dodgy "hemi engine" hemispherical heads. They aren't more efficient. Actually less so. More power yes, but at the cost of fuel efficiency. It's like Ferrari. They'll never win any fuel efficiency awards but they sure do win races. More power usually means more fuel spent. Don't forget to inflate to sidewall. -posted with fleabag's approval.
 
Let's look at eBay's example. They bought five boxes at a cost of $700K-800K each. So, they spent at least $3.5 Million and in 9 months saved $100K. Without taking tax credits into consideration, the ROI is +25 years. With tax credits in consideration, maybe 12-13 years.

Now let's look at the inventor's price-point for a home model. He thinks the cost would need to be around $3K. Ok, but like eBay's model it requires FUEL. Also, why $3K? Why not embed the cost (say, $15K) into that of the mortgage and treat it like a furnace instead of a leather sofa.

And what exactly are the byproducts of the fuel being consumed. He provides natural gas as an example fuel. There's got to be byproducts. While I am skeptical regarding the residentual application, I am more wondering if the costs couldn't be put elsewhere.

For instance, how about we move away from the 1973 energy policy and start requiring all homes to have R35 insulation in the walls, and R50 in the roof/ceiling? This can be achieved with open/closed cell spray-on foam solutions that have been around for decades.

Now, lower the environmental energy consumption due to that 3-5X insulating benefits and you dramatically reduce environmental operating costs (heating and cooling).
 
BarkingGhostar said:
Let's look at eBay's example. They bought five boxes at a cost of $700K-800K each. So, they spent at least $3.5 Million and in 9 months saved $100K. Without taking tax credits into consideration, the ROI is +25 years. With tax credits in consideration, maybe 12-13 years.

Now let's look at the inventor's price-point for a home model. He thinks the cost would need to be around $3K. Ok, but like eBay's model it requires FUEL. Also, why $3K? Why not embed the cost (say, $15K) into that of the mortgage and treat it like a furnace instead of a leather sofa.

And what exactly are the byproducts of the fuel being consumed. He provides natural gas as an example fuel. There's got to be byproducts. While I am skeptical regarding the residentual application, I am more wondering if the costs couldn't be put elsewhere.

For instance, how about we move away from the 1973 energy policy and start requiring all homes to have R35 insulation in the walls, and R50 in the roof/ceiling? This can be achieved with open/closed cell spray-on foam solutions that have been around for decades.

Now, lower the environmental energy consumption due to that 3-5X insulating benefits and you dramatically reduce environmental operating costs (heating and cooling).
Click to expand...
R35 in the walls???? How the hell would you accomplish that!? The insulation batts you put in the walls at the moment are like R7 and you can't just stuff a bunch of those in order to increase the R value because that's not how insulation works. Now R35 I can see for a ceiling but for walls?? Also a lot of the heat is lost through windows.
 
I love people blasting the costs of a prototype product. eBay didn't install them to save money right away, they installed them to help Bloom demonstrate they even work. If they were to actually go into production, the costs of building these would drop by orders of magnitude.

Now I have no idea how these things work, or how well they even do, but its a little silly to pan them over costs at this stage of the game.
 
fleabag said:
R35 in the walls???? How the hell would you accomplish that!? The insulation batts you put in the walls at the moment are like R7 and you can't just stuff a bunch of those in order to increase the R value because that's not how insulation works. Now R35 I can see for a ceiling but for walls?? Also a lot of the heat is lost through windows.
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Facepalm...

Yet another fleabag quote.

Most if not all REQUIRE at least R13 in the wall already. Not sure where you got the R7 from.

I am doing a R25 in walls I am building right now.
 
A fuel cell that's main component is baked sand coated with ink. If the claims are true and they can get the costs of these reasonable, this definitely has potential.

There are still some unknowns for sure, but the ability to generate electricity silently and directly onsite using biofuel, solar, wind, natural gas or 12,000 hamster wheels..

what exactly constitutes a big breakthrough?
 
PepePeru said:
A fuel cell that's main component is baked sand coated with ink. If the claims are true and they can get the costs of these reasonable, this definitely has potential.

There are still some unknowns for sure, but the ability to generate electricity silently and directly onsite using biofuel, solar, wind, natural gas or 12,000 hamster wheels..

what exactly constitutes a big breakthrough?
Click to expand...

We run our datacenter here on a massive buttered cat array.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttered_cat_paradox
 
Mmm... solid state fuel cell that splits hydrocarbons into water and CO2. Without knowing efficiency compared to NG turbines or other power plants it is too early to say if it is worth it.

However, if this really is using a cheap metal catalyst and baked sand + ink as materials... could cheapen full cell production costs.
 
GaryJohnson said:
We run our datacenter here on a massive buttered cat array.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttered_cat_paradox
Click to expand...
We were going to implement one too. But then we realized that the buttered cat needed food (fuel). The cost of the fuel isn't too bad. But, have you ever tried to feed a hovering cat which is rotating at 60 Hz? After three technicians had their hands severely bitten, we cancelled that plan. I wanted to add gears to it so that the cat could rotate slower than 60 Hz, but apparantly that isn't a feasible reality. You can't slow down the cat-toast phenomenon. How did you get around it? I think an engine that runs off of water may help, but I'm stumped so far.
 
Did it occur to anyone that maybe this process does NOT release CO2 and thus saves the companies a lot of money in enviromental taxes and stuff like that? Reducing your carbon footprint as a company == $$!
 
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