What do cable company Comcast and furniture seller IKEA have in common, other than that one of them requires the other's birch veneer entertainment center to hold its cable box?
Both are using fuel cells to power some of their buildings.
Social currency
Bloom Energy, which makes fuel cell generators, is seeing interest in its carbon footprint-friendly electricity fuel cell systems as the corporate world clamors to obtain brownie points from the public looking to do business with socially aware companies. Fuel cells are clean, sometimes renewable energy sources.
Other advantages to the enterprise include energy security.
化学反应
Fuel cells, first used widely in the space program, are generator-sized machines that convert the chemical energy from fuels into electrical power through a chemical reaction. They often use oxygen to oxidize metal.
他们不是电池，这只是通过化学反应储存电能。燃料电池实际上使电力。
Solid oxide
布卢姆能源的系统使用的固体氧化物燃料电池，它说提供了比较旧的氢燃料电池技术的电效率更高。它也更便宜的，因为它使用成本较低的陶瓷材料，而不是贵金属如铂，所使用的传统的燃料电池装置。
Solid fuel cells of the kind Bloom uses have the added advantage of not needing corrosive acids or molten materials. Fuel and air is converted into electricity without mucky carbon-producing combustion.
Recycled water
Water, created in the process as oxygen ions combine with "reformed" fuel, is recycled to make steam, which is also used in the process. The system just needs fuel, air, and heat. Heat is created during the water recycling process. The thing just keeps going when the elements are in place.
Biogas
我KEA's fuel cell, called an energy server, which will be commissioned at its 15-acre Emeryville store near San Francisco, willuse biogas as the fuel.
Biogas is a mash-up of different organic gases. Agriculturally produced manure, plant material, municipal waste, and food can all be used to make biogas.
Natural gas
Cable provider CenturyLinkhas also installed Bloomfuel cells for supplying power at a Southern California data center. Its system runs on natural gas.
Comcast hasn't said, in public web-available documents that I've seen,这将是使用什么燃料for its installation in Connecticut.
However, the project will reduce emissions at the Comcast facility by the equivalent of the annual emissions from 185 cars or 121 homes, Bloom says.
Cleantech
Bloom, through its energy servers, wants to move industry away from a centralized "hub and spoke" energy network to a "clean, distributed, and more reliable energy future," it was引述在CNBC的干扰器50年度名单说of the 50 most revolutionary private companies.
And it's got plenty of money to do it with. Bloom has raised $1.2 billion in funding, according to CNBC.
Data centers
The reliable, energy-secure technology is particularly well suited to data centers. eBay's Utah data center, for example, uses Bloom's fuel cells.
Fossil fuels
But probably one of the best things aboutBloom Energysystems is that they can run on either bio- or non-renewable fossil fuels.
So in the unlikely event that renewable fuels like compost lose favor, or if fracking becomes popular with consumers, you could always just perform a few tweaks, and then order some natural gas.