Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

So do the subsidies make it more "green"? Come on guys - you get nothing for free. There is a price for everything - it can be monetary or environmental. I don't know much about the bloom-box, but there is both a monetary and environmental cost in there somewhere!

lol mea culpa... That was me copying/pasting a blurb from wired magazine... I guess that is what I get from using them as a source =P

So yea perpetual motion machines break the laws of thermodynamics and I am not one to defend what the author of the article might have tried to imply in that statement.

I found this to be a really interesting back and forth discussion of Thorium Reactors especially since it was the first time I came across the idea of them so I'm pretty new to an actual debate of nuclear energy that doesn't just rely on scare tactics and stories of chernobyl and three mile island:

http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/commen ... nt_of_all/

But yea I don't mean to derail this thread about the Bloom Energy Cell anymore. I just figured it might be nice to add some other alternatives to the mix for possible future discussion debate.

Back on Bloom Energy Cells:

From the ideas that I've gotten from this forum, the bloom box seems like it would be an excellent way of starting little eco-villages far from the teet of "The Grid". Hypothetically, a village could practice intensive farming and raising of livestock and extract methane gas from composting of vegetables and animal manure and then when the composting was done the leftovers could be returned back to the land/system. The only real outside inputs to the community would be sunlight/water used to grow the plants and the initial purchase/maintenance cost of a bloom energy box and whatever else gets purchased that the community was not currently able to produce but still needed.

Sounds good to me where do I sign up?

=P

Sounds good to me, too, but I prefer not to be on the bleeding edge of tech. Let someone else bleed 'till they find the sharp edges...

Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFCs) are wonderful in that they operate at such a high temp that they typically can use lots of different hydrocarbon fuels (hydrogen, methane, propane, butane, etc) and are not so easy to poison with sulfur compounds and other misc chemicals.

On the other hand, operating at such high temps, they tend to wear out or fail fast and use brittle ceramic components and take hours to start up: using one in a camper, car, truck, or boat wouldn't work well....yet. But I'm hoping..

I'd frigging LOVE to have a hundred watt SOFC running on propane in my camper to charge batteries, run lights, heat water (with it's waste heat), etc when the sun has not cooperated. Having one run the house would be nice, although I think I'd rather have a 1 or 2 kW one in the RV and use an extension cord for the house.

So,
1) waiting for proof of stability and value, then install one in house.
2) Waiting for them to be sturdy enough for RV, then I'm a happy camper! No more generator noise!