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• Time of issue:2020-01-10
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(Summary description)Bloom Box in transit

Former U.S. Secretary of State Schultz and Powell, California Governor Schwarzenegger, eBay President John Donahoe, Google Co-founder Larry Page, and senior executives of famous American companies such as Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, and FedEx ... A few days ago, these big names in politics and business gathered at the eBay headquarters building in San Jose, California.The purpose of their trip was not to attend celebrity parties, but to attend a high-profile solid oxide launched by Silicon Valley emerging energy company Bloom Energy. Fuel cell box-Bloom Box.

After years of being tight-lipped, Bloom Energy's CEO, Sridhar, finally announced to the world this mysterious fuel cell that cost $ 400 million and was developed for eight years. According to Sridal, Bloom Box truly achieves low prices (only 10 cents per kilowatt-hour of commercial electricity), long life (long life of up to 10 years), and basically no carbon emissions. It is a "change the world" Products, more than 20 well-known US companies have purchased and are using this new battery box. The emergence of the Bloom Box has greatly attracted the attention of western media such as the United States and even AFP. Almost all news agencies have reported it in the first place. The famous 60 minutes program of CBS is still in the press conference. An exclusive interview with Sridhar, then what is the magic of this fuel cell known as the "magic box"? Will it really be enough to change the world, as Sridal said?

重大 A major breakthrough in solid oxygen fuel cells

Bloom Box is a new type of solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC), which can be classified as a third-generation fuel cell in terms of properties. It is a full-efficiency direct conversion of chemical energy stored in fuel and oxidant into electrical energy. Solid-state chemical power generation device.

固 Compared with the first-generation phosphoric acid fuel cell (PAFC) and the second-generation molten salt carbonate fuel cell (MCFC), solid oxygen cells have excellent characteristics such as high efficiency and wide adaptability to various fuel gases. However, like most new energy sources, traditional solid-oxide batteries also face high cost problems, because such batteries inevitably use precious metal materials such as platinum in the manufacturing process. Structural problems, such as the chemical diffusion at the interface between the electrolyte and the electrode, the coefficient of thermal expansion, the matching between different materials, and the material stability of the bipolar plate all have great technical obstacles, which simply means "cannot afford" . UTC, a well-known American fuel cell manufacturer, has been studying solid oxygen batteries for 30 years, but it is still in the experimental stage, and its technical difficulty can be imagined.

Bloom Box has done a good job in materials science and manufacturing processes, it completely abandoned the use of precious metals. According to Sridhar, the core material of Bloom Box is sand, zirconia and other semiconductor materials. It does not consume more expensive metals such as copper, so the cost is guaranteed. Bloom Box also has a revolutionary performance in compatibility. It can use almost all hydrocarbon fuels to generate electricity, such as ethanol, bio-oil, biogas or natural gas, and even vodka, but the entire power generation process does not burn these materials. Because solid oxygen batteries generate electricity through electrochemical reactions. When using fossil energy such as petroleum and coal bed gas to generate electricity, its carbon emissions are only 40% of traditional thermal power plants, and if non-fossil fuels are used to generate electricity, it can achieve zero carbon emissions.

"Cheap electricity, not cheap batteries"

Humans have been studying fuel cells for more than 100 years, but earlier products were basically concentrated in the aviation and automotive industries, but few attempts have been made in large-scale commercial and civilian applications. This is because fuel cells are costly and on the other hand Because this type of battery has poor stability and a short life, Bloom Box is very promising to make a major breakthrough in this field.

The Bloom Box that Sridhar launched at the press conference was about the same size as a refrigerator. Its power output was about 100 kilowatts and its price was about 700,000 US dollars. However, its 10-year life was enough for users to recover costs. At present, 20 companies in the United States have purchased this type of Bloom Box, FedEx purchased 5 at a time, Google also purchased 4 for its headquarters in Mountain View, California, and eBay, Coca-Cola and other companies have also become The first customers of Bloom Box. This large battery pack is equivalent to an independent power station in terms of effect. As long as raw materials are available, it can generate electricity independently without being integrated into the power grid. A big advan