Scott DeWar
Prof. Emeritus-Supernatural Events/Countermeasure
I believe I've found some news articles about this thing, and it just seems to be a fuel cell. You can kind of think of fuel cells as batteries that require, well, fuel. This is not really new technology, but I guess they claim to be able to make them smaller and cleaner. I can't say whether they have or not, of course --- part of how "clean" or "green" a fuel cell is depends on the fuel you give it --- but I don't think there's anything in principle that says they can't.
Yes, it is plausible. It is a fuel cell, and the basic idea dates back to 1838 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell
Now, when they say early in that video that there's no burning - that's technically inaccurate. The fuel cell takes some specific fuel, and combines it with oxygen to get energy. What do you think "combine fuel and oxygen" is? Oxidation, aka "burning". A fuel cell does it without an open flame, mediated by a catalyst on a substrate(1) that takes a spare electron out of the process and feeds it into a wire.
Now, note something - you need fuel for this to work. In order to put one of those in your yard to power your house, you need it to be next to a fuel tank, or fed by a municipal fuel line, or something. So, yes, you can remove power lines and electrical distribution grids, but then you need to have fuel distribution instead. My house already gets natural gas, so I could install one of these in my basement. But for rural areas(2) that don't have gas service? Carting around big bottles of flammable liquids to remote areas is not itself cheap, energy-wise.
Also note that whether the energy is "clean" depends on the fuel used. If you use pure hydrogen, then you get water (3) and a bit of heat out - that's not bad, but pure hydrogen is actually pretty expensive. If you use a fossil hydrocarbon, you get CO2 out, which is not so good. If you use a biofuel (say, alcohol), then at least the carbon is coming from the biological carbon cycle - but typically you have to watch biofuels because their production processes are often not very clean.
first of all, the highlighted portions were the source of my concern. My question of how green / clean this is considering the use of hydrocarbon fuels. what is the exchange rate of say cu ft of natural gas to watt vs natural gas to watt of a nat gas generator?
second of all my points of interst as numbered
(1) I am guessing the two "inks" mentioned are the catalysts, the ceramic of silicone sand the substrate
(2)rural areas often are fueled by liquid petroleum gas: propane. They are usually in taks of various sizes sitting on the same side as where the kitche sits and brought into the house with copper tubing.
rural Missouri is about 99 percent run by this gas for heating and cooking.
another couple of hydrocarbon fuels you see is found on farms typically: agricultural diesel and ag gasoline.Chemically the same except for a green dye put in it. this fuels is not for road travel use as road taxes are not charged in this fuel and there are very heavy fines in finding the green die in your car's tank as a very convincing deturrant.
(3) water: I have seen a few water to fuel conversions out there, bu none are in the market yet. Where are they. Why are they not in use??