SPECIAL FEATURES:
Email
First hydrogen fuel cell for the home
First commercial hydrogen fuel cell for the home has gone into its final testing phase and will be available in Japan the spring 2009.
Mon, Mar 30 2009 at 4:52 PM
Related Topics:
Japanese electronics company Matsushita, best known for its Panasonic line of home electronics and appliances, will claim first place in the race to put commercial home fuel cells on the market, but a slew of other companies are in tow.
The fuel cell can optimally provide 70 percent of the energy needs for a 1,280 square foot house with four people. According to Matsushita, the cell can reduce energy consumption by 22 percent and CO2 emissions by 12 percent as compared to all other power sources. The unit is guaranteed to last 40,000 hours, which amounts to ten years of operation, roughly the same amount of time it will take a consumer in Japan to recoup their initial investment. (The government will subsidize the purchase, although how much remains undetermined. The company estimates a $10,000 investment by consumers.)
Customers will purchase the fuel cell system from a local gas company, who will install it, a fairly simple process says Matsushita.
While fuel cell technology takes many different forms, in this case, the cogeneration home fuel cell hooks up to the city’s natural gas lines, extracting hydrogen from the gas in a fuel-processing device. The stream of hydrogen is combined with oxygen through a series of polyelectrolyte membranes, a process that creates electricity, heat, and water. The home fuel cell produces between 500 watts and a 1 kilowatt of electricity and captures the heat to warm a tank of water, used for showers, dishes etc.
The company views the product as a contribution to Japan’s goals of reducing global CO2 emissions 50 percent by 2050.
Matsushita was evasive, however, about the amount of energy required to manufacture its fuel cell. In general fuel cells require a great deal of energy; for example, this unit contains more than 2,000 components. Whether the production of the units negates the energy and CO2 savings gained by customers is unclear.
Could the home fuel cell work in the US today? It could. With a few tweaks to the voltage and filters that deal with impurities in the natural gas, technically speaking, the fuel cell would work. Will it be here soon? They say there are no specific plans, but Matsushita hopes to make the home fuel cell available in the EU, Africa, China, and the Americas sooner than later.
Story by Victoria Schlesinger. This article originally appeared in "Plenty" in July 2008.
Copyright Environ Press 2008
You might also like:
Sign in with one of these accounts to add your comment.
EDITORS' PICKS
Advertisement
TODAY'S MOST POPULAR ON
- 15 famous people who mysteriously disappeared
- What causes tornadoes?
- 10 false facts most people think are true
- Best air-filtering houseplants, according to NASA
- 9 habits that may do more harm than good
- 20 ways to reuse coffee grounds, tea leaves
- Do e-cigarettes help smokers quit?
- 5 mind-bending facts about dreams
- The 9 nastiest things in your supermarket
- 13 natural remedies for the ant invasion
From our sponsor
NEWSLETTER
Advertisement
Nedstack in Holland has a wonderful product line and has a 1 giga watt Fuel cell in use and market units down to 2.2KW to 9.5Kw which could power a Home.... they currently use them to run remote cell towers...... Making there unit work in a house is not that big of a problem. you use a Gas Reformer to make Hydrogen from Natural gas you don't Burn anything your byproduct is Water and some Heat these units are PEM type cells.. small nedstack.com
little late to this post. but it would seem from a common sense stand point that based on the whole humans cause global warming arguement I must say houston we have a problem, as the Ice age ended when there were hardly iany humans and no machines. there for it would only stand to reason that to correct this horrible travisty that we should all stop breathing to show solidarity for the this pressing issue.
The real advantage of these independant home systems is that terrorists cannot sabotage them like the main grid.
they need to redo their math... 40,000 hours is not even half of their 10 year claim! It's about 4.6 years!
Here is my solution...get the fuel cell that converts water into power and CO2...THEN pipe the CO2 into a greenhouse! Fuel AND food at the same time!
(Not that I believe the greenhouse-gas garbage being spouted by the libs; but hey, why not make it work on both ends??? )
whether you cover the plants(in case of a greenhouse) o0r no cover, net CO2 reduction is the same. think about it.
joe you're an idiot
Dear "Tired of False Hope", are you dumb or just ignorant? Yes, excess CO2 causes global warming... go back to science 101!
No your the idot science 101 shows that global warming is a complete lie.
Dear "Tired of False Hope", are you dumb or just ignorant? Yes, excess CO2 causes global warming... go back to science 101!
If we are really having global warming as all the experts say . Why is it that Greenland is Frozen over when in the year 1100 is was Green? You know when the Vikings discovered it and named it "Greenland".... And if plants live off of Co2 in theory they should be growing faster and more luxuriant than ever before .
Just a couple of thoughts
...
The reason that Greenland has its name is that the Vikings wanted people to stay away from iceland. They named the green one Iceland and the icy one greenland. Nice to know a simple mind trick works 900 years later ( at least on some people).
YO JOE!!!!!!!!!!!