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Saturday, June 22, 2002
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I've been watching the development of fuel cells for cars at places like the California Fuel Cell Partnership, mostly because my son's involvement through his engineering program at the University of California at Davis. It turns out that because of their need for electricity generation in remote areas the telcom companies may well push for fuel cell adoption long before cars based on that technology are available.
At present, much of the commercial activity is concentrated in early adopters and rural electric cooperatives. But that could change quickly, as the telecom industry warms up to fuel cells to power remote generators. The attraction? Fuel cells can run far longer than diesel generators before they require maintenance, says McNeill [vice-president for business development at HPower]. For cell-tower locations in hard-to-reach areas that require backup generators, the lower maintenance requirement can more than make up for higher raw power-generation costs.
While fuel cells are currently less cost effective than other energy generation methods, development is moving ahead rapidly.
Unlike the relatively mature internal combustion technologies, fuel cells are improving in efficiency by about 30% a year, according to McNeill. "It's moving so fast," says Joseph Cargnelli, the vice-president for technology at Toronto fuel-cell concern Hydrogenics. "A fuel-cell engine that we developed a year ago is outdated today due to new materials, more power density, and more robust construction."
(Via John Robb)
10:03:12 PM 
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We spent the afternoon at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute's annual open house. MBARI was created through funding from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation as a research adjunct to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
There were opportunities to talk to scientists and engineers about both the primary goals of their research as well as the tools they use. My engineer's soul was particularly attracted to the remotely operated undersea vehicles (ROV) and autonomous machines they use to go down as far as 4,000 meters into the Monterey Trench. Their machine shop is complete with numerical controlled milling machines and an abrasive water cutter. In addition to fabricating buoys and underwater sensors, they developed and manufactured their own premier ROV, the Tiburon.
My disappointment was that we arrived too late to go aboard the Western Flyer, the Tiburon's mother ship. The Flyer is a 100+ foot, twin-hulled research ship that was designed specially for MBARI.
In the era of the terror war, the Israel-Palestine conflagration, and the market meltdown, it is somehow comforting to spend even a few hours in the relatively pure world of research. We are indeed fortunate that the country has enough resources to continue this work while simultaneously attending to the more gruesome tasks. It's also worthwhile to keep in mind that one of the reasons we are expending so much energy and treasure is to maintain our ability to press on with scientific research. I suspect that history will not look kindly on the dot-com bubble and the Enron/Anderson fiasco; if anything will mark our passing it is the scientific knowledge generated by places like MBARI.
9:42:44 PM
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© Copyright
2002
Ivan Heling.
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6/28/02; 3:40:01 PM.
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