by Spence Cooper on 02/26/10 at 10:15 am
Not yet but the Bloom Box will probably be powering all your kitchen appliances in the not too distant future. The Bloom Box was originally developed for NASA as a means of producing oxygen for astronauts landing on Mars.
When the mission was scrubbed, K.R. Sridhar, a former NASA engineer, altered his invention to produce energy with solid-oxide fuel cells that run on plant waste and natural gas via an electrochemical reaction instead of combustion.
What is revolutionary about the Bloom Box is that each box will be able to power a household, restaurant or business and operate independent of a power grid, and the energy produced is cleaner and more efficient than oil, gas or coal.
Imagine a metal box the size of a refrigerator in your back yard. Inside are flat, coaster-size ceramic plates stacked into small blocks that act as solid oxide fuel cells combining water, oxygen and natural gas or ethanol to produce power, heat and cooling. Multiple 100kW units costing $700,000 – $800,000 are already being used by eBay, Wal-Mart, and FedEx.
According to The Atlantic, the Bloom Box is being used as part of an ongoing trial at the University of Tennessee, where a Bloom Box the size of a coffee table capable of powering a 5,000-square-foot house has proved twice as efficient as a traditional gas-burning system and produced 60 percent fewer emissions. “If you have clean, affordable energy, you can get clean air and clean water whenever you want,” Sridhar says. “You can make recycling affordable. You can turn latent local resources into marketable ones. I want to open up access to energy the way that PCs and the Web opened up access to information,” Sridhar says. “So people can live where they want, and still be connected, without someone telling them when they can do their laundry.”
Sridhar’s goal is to produce an efficient, affordable fuel cell for industry, homes, businesses and even Third World villages to produce their own power. “Distributed power is like democracy, and centralized power is like communism,” says Sridhar. And when the price of the refrigerator-size Bloom Boxes drops enough for any village to afford one, power to the people will have real meaning.”
According to Sridhar, 64 stacks could power a Starbucks. Currently there are over 16,000 Starbucks in the world (11,000 of which are in the USA). According to the Green Restaurant Association “Restaurants are responsible for the largest consumption of energy in the retail sector”. The impact of the Bloom Box could be significant. Although the technology is still quite pricey for small business and the regular home; Sridhar estimates that within three to five years Bloom Boxes will be ready for home use, and be competitive with traditional electrical grid energy supplies.
The former NASA engineer believes the biggest impact will be in villages throughout the developing world cut off from power. “Access to electricity is a life-enhancer,” Sridhar says. “It means access to information, access to education, to clean water, and to good health because refrigeration will prevent food from spoiling.”
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