Green Manufacturing of Electricity Using SOFC Based Bloom Energy Server TM

Shaishav R. Pandya, Vatsal M. Shah, Soham D. Shah

Abstract The need for manufacturing and generation of electricity in a cheap, clean and green way is a must in an eco-friendly society. Bloom Energy Server is one of the best possible solutions. The heart of it is patented solidoxide fuel cell (SOFC). The basic principle of its working is reverse electrolysis. The cells can run on a variety of fuels, including traditional fuel, natural gas, biomass gas, landfill gas, and ethanol. It produces enough energy so as to power 100 average households or 30,000 sq.ft. office. It has a very good scope in India where electricity is costly and also not readily available. Bloom Energy Server is cheap (when compared with avg. Indian commercial and residential electricity cost) and reduces carbon emissions by 60 to 100%. This paper further discusses the amount which we can save by using it and the role our government can play to make its usage even more cost effective. Keywords Distributed power generation (DG), solidoxide fuel cell, Energy Server TM, Environment.

servers. They use solid oxide fuel cells to convert fuel into electricity through a clean reverse electrolysis process rather than pollution-causing combustion. This paper is organized as follows. In Section II and III, fuel cell and SOFC is described in detail. Section IV describes the architecture of Bloom Energy Server. Energy Server is compared with solar and wind generators in Section V. Its customers, benefits and applications are discussed in Section VI. Its scope in India and the role which the government of India can play is discussed in section VII. FUEL CELL A fuel cell is a device which converts chemical energy of a fuel to electrical energy through chemical reaction with oxygen or any other oxidizing agent. Fuel cells primarily use hydrogen as fuel, but nowadays fuel cell working on ethanol; biogas and natural are also available.
II.

INTRODUCTION Bloom Energy Server is an innovative concept in distributed power generation technology to produce electricity. Bloom-Energy, a start up based in Silicon Valley led by K.R. Sridhar has come up with Bloom's Energy Server, a clean, reliable and affordable electricity generator at the customer site. He introduced it as Its the plug and play future of electricity. Bloom Energy is a provider of breakthrough solid oxide fuel cell technology that generates clean, highly-efficient power onsite from a wide variety of fuel sources. Bloom Energys mission is to make clean, reliable energy affordable for everyone in the world. The Bloom Energy Server is currently producing power for several Fortune 500 companies. The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA..Each Bloom Box provides 100200kW of power, enough to meet the base load needs of 100 average homes(900 kWh/house) or a 30,000 sqft. office building, day and night, in roughly the footprint of a standard parking space. [4][1] For more power, simply add more energy
I.

Construction and working of fuel cell In such cells, hydrogen and oxygen gases are bubbled into the concentrated aqueous solution of an alkali like sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide through the porous carbon electrodes, which contain small catalyst like platinum. Hydrogen is fed into anode compartment, where it is oxidized. Oxygen is fed into cathode compartment, where it is reduced. The diffusion rates of these gases are carefully regulated to get maximum efficiency. Working of it is shown schematically in Fig. 1 and reactions taking place at anode and cathode are: Anode reaction: 2H2 (g) + 4OH-(aq) 4H2O (l) +4eCathode reaction: O2 (g) + 2H2O (l) + 4e- 4OH-(aq) _______________________________________ Net reaction: 2H2 (g) + O2 (g) 2H2O (l)
A.

The cell runs continuously as long as the reactants not use any noble metal like platinum for catalytic are fed into it. The voltage of such cells is about actions, but the high temperature itself eases the 1.2V. reaction rate. The largest disadvantage is the high operating temperature which results in longer startup time. SOFCs operate at extremely high temperature (typically above 800C). This high temperature gives them extremely high electrical efficiencies, and fuel flexibility, both of which contribute to better economics. Also SOFCs have a potential long life expectancy of more than 4000080000 hr.
[9}

Fig 1. Working of a H2-O2 fuel cell.

Uses and Advantages Uses of this cell are that they can be used to generate electricity continuously and they were used for electric power in the Apollo space programme. [8] Advantages of fuel cells are: 1. High efficiency: The fuel cells convert chemical energy of fuels directly into electrical energy and hence are more efficient than conventional methods. 2. Continuous source of energy: In this cell, there are no electrode materials to be replaced. Fuel can be fed continuously to produce Fig 2. Bloom Box SOFC, black is cathode and green is anode. power and that is the reason why they are used in space-crafts. Source: Bloom Energy Server Website. 3. Pollution free working: In this cell, no objectionable by-products are produced and For a solid oxide fuel cell, the electrolyte is a therefore they do not cause any pollution solid ceramic material. According to Blooms problems. patent description, these thin white ceramic plates are Scandia stabilized Zirconia (ScSZ).The anode and cathode are made from special inks that coat the electrolyte. One side of the ceramic electrolyte III. SOLID-OXIDE FUEL CELLS plate is coated with a green nickel oxide-based ink Solid-oxide fuel cells like the name suggests are that works as an anode; the other side, which works characterized by a solid-oxide or a ceramic type as a cathode, is coated with black ink (Lanthanum electrode material. Advantages of this class of fuel Strontium Manganite). The Bloom server does not cells include high efficiency, long-term stability, require chemicals, such as the corrosive acids used fuel flexibility, low emissions, and relatively low in conventional fuel cells. Instead, it uses cost. Low cost is possible because such fuel cells do inexpensive metal alloy plates for electric
B.

Construction of SOFC In Blooms SOFC, the electrolyte is a solid ceramic square made from a common sand-like "powder. A fuel cell is like a battery that always runs. It consists of three parts: an electrolyte, an anode, and a cathode. The anode and cathode are as shown in Fig. 2.
A.

conductance between the two ceramic fast-ion as there's fuel, air, and heat, the process continues conductor plates, as opposed to the use of costly producing clean, reliable, affordable energy. [2][3][5] precious metals like gold or platinum that is used for high conductance in other fuel cells.[6][4][9] Anode Reaction: 2 CH3OH+2H2O2CO2+12H++ 12eWorking of SOFC An electrochemical reaction converts fuel and air into electricity without combustion. SOFC requires a high operating temperature (600-1000oC) for its reactions to take place. The working is shown in Fig. 4. At a high temperature, warm air enters the cathode side of the fuel cell. The resulting steam mixes with the fuel to produce reformed fuel; this reformed fuel enters the anode side, and a chemical reaction takes place.
B.

Cathode Reaction: 3O2+ 12H+ + 12e- 6H2O _________________________________________ Overall Reaction: 2CH3OH + 3O2 2CO2 + 4H2O + 12 ePower Output of SOFC Each plate of a SOFC produces about twenty five
C.

Fig. 4. How a Solid oxide Fuel Cell Works. Source: Bloom Energy Server Website

Fig.3 Cross section of the three ceramic layers of an SOFC. From left to right: porous cathode, dense electrolyte, porous anode. Source: www.wikipedia.com

watts of power. The plates are stacked together until the total power produced is one hundred kilowatts. This means about 4000 plates have to be stacked together.
IV. ENERGY SERVER ARCHITECTURE

Next, the chemical reaction begins in the fuel cell. As the reformed fuel crosses the anode, it attracts oxygen ions from the cathode. The oxygen ions combine with the reformed fuel to produce electricity, water, and small amounts of carbon dioxide. The water gets recycled to produce the steam needed to reform the fuel. The process also generates the heat required by the fuel cell. As long

Every bloom energy cell basically is made by the solid oxide fuel cell technology (As explained above). Each energy server consists of thousands of Bloom energy cells. Each cell is a flat solid ceramic square made from a common sand-like "powder." Each Bloom Energy fuel cell is capable of producing about 25W, enough to power a light bulb. For more power, the cells are sandwiched; along

with metal interconnect plates into a fuel cell The output from the fuel cell is naturally in the "stack". A few stacks, together about the size of a form of direct current (DC), but as most technology loaf of bread, are enough to power an average home. is built to run on alternating current (AC) the

Fig 5. Internal structure of Bloom Box. Source: Bloom Energy Server

Each energy server has multiple stacks aggregated together into a "power module", Multiple power modules, along with a common fuel input and electrical output are assembled as a complete system as shown on Fig. 5.

Energy Server comes with the necessary conversion to 480 volts three phase AC. 480V is typically delivered on local transmission lines; a 4-to-1 transformer can be used to step down this voltage to 120V with minimal losses if needed. Thus, multiple Energy Server systems can be deployed side by side. When more power is requiredfor example, for commercial or industrial sitesmultiple Energy Server systems can be deployed side by side. The current Energy Server in the market has the capacity to generate 100kW of electricity, which would power a 30,000 sq. ft. office building or 100 average-sized U.S. homes. [4] The above explained architecture of Bloom box in shown in Fig. 6. The modular architecture also ensures, 1. Easy and fast deployment 2. Inherent redundancy for fault tolerance 3. High availability (one power module can be serviced while all others continue to operate) 4. Mobility.

Fig 6. Architectural diagram of Bloom Box. Source: CNET news.

V.

COMPARISON OF BLOOM ENERGY SERVER WITH

SOLAR AND WIND GENERATORS

The advantages and disadvantages of Bloom Energy Server over solar and wind generators are listed as below: 1) Energy costs: The Bloom server will produce power for nine to 10 cents per kilowatt hour after incentives (California offers a $2,500 per kilowatt subsidy. And then theres the 30 percent US federal government tax credit and without incentives 16 cents max). Commercial solar installations, when incentives and external costs are added, generate power for around 10 cents a kilowatt hour. But Residential solar generates power for around 19 cents a kilowatt hour and utility-scale solar costs around 11 cents a kilowatt hour. Cutting edge wind turbines can generate power for five cents a kilowatt hour after incentives, according to the American Wind Energy Association. Wind wins this contest and solar and Bloom are about tied. Bloom server buyers will have to contend with fluctuating gas prices: The box does not work if you dont put gas into it. If methane and biogas rise in price, so will the cost of running the box. Buyers, however, can likely insulate themselves with long-term gas contracts. 2) Maintenance: Solar panels require a minimum of maintenance. Dust them occasionally and wipe off the snow and you are done. Bloom servers will be monitored closely by their initial buyers. The servers also contain fans and other mechanical objects. More handholding and repairs seem inevitable. One of the big hurdles that Bloom will have to leap is the reliability of the ceramic/zirconium plates inside the fuel cell. These plates, which convert gas to electricity, must operate in an 800-degree Celsius environment without becoming distorted or corrupted. User data will be heavily scrutinized. Sources say that the plates have a lifetime of five years: replacement at this pace is contemplated at nine to 10 cents a kilowatt hour price. If replacement occurs at a faster rate, it could throw off the costs.

3) Warranty: Solar systems have warranties that last 20 years or more. Bloom currently offers a 10 year warranty. 4) Testing and certification: Solar and wind both have an advantage here. Underwriters Laboratory and hundreds of utilities have tested and tinkered with photovoltaic panels and wind turbines for years. Getting a solar field approved mostly revolves around obtaining financing. Bloom will have to go through the proctology exam of utility reliability testing. That could take a few years. On the other hand, if Bloom passes these tests well, sales will zoom. 5) Carbon emissions: It takes about four years to work off the carbon footprint of a solar panel. The Bloom server continually emits carbon dioxide. But the Bloom server emits about half of the carbon dioxide that would be generated if you bought power from a power plant. Consumers can reduce their carbon footprint to almost zero by stoking the box with biogas. Blooms patents discuss converting the waste carbon dioxide into a methane-like fuel by running the carbon dioxide through the fuel cell and adding water. Its a fascinating, but extremely challenging idea, but bloom is working on it. Bloom thus represents a step forward compared to power plants. 6) Power availability: This is Blooms biggest selling point. The box can produce power 24 hours a day in a completely predictably fashion. Solar panels only produce during the day and wind turbines are only active about 30 percent of the time. Worse, wind turbines in many areas generate most of their power at night. 7) Storage: Bloom has an advantage over solar and wind generators. Fuel cells are by their very nature electricity-storage devices. Power doesnt get made until gas gets released into the fuel cell stack. General Electric and others are trying to build sodium or lithium battery packs to store power at wind and solar fields but these are in the experimental stage. 8) Competition: Bloom will have to face an array of competitors: General Electric, Siemens, Philips, Areva, you name it. The relatively small company will have to run fast to stay

ahead of industrial giants or face getting acquired. Solar and wind have already gone through this process. Solar and wind companies again can also license ideas and leverage partnerships. Bloom right now is sort of on its own. 9) Manufacturing footprint: The solar industry continues to work off a glut of excess factory capacity, whereas Bloom needs to build up. Solar wins for now, but for painful reasons. Although Bloom has raised around $400 million, it will need to raise more to build up factory capacity. As other companies have found, finding financing still remains tough.[6] Thus, we can see that Bloom Energy Servers have clearly a leading edge when compared with solar and wind generators.
VI. CUSTOMERS, BENEFITS AND APPLICATIONS

1)

2)

Bloom Energy Server costs between $700,000 and $800,000, and pays for itself in three to 5 years based on an energy cost of 8 to 9 cents per kW hour. Bloom Energy Servers are currently in use by a few notable companies who have agreed to test the technology. Google, a company known to be on the forefront off technology themselves, was their very first customer. Four units of Bloom Boxes have been powering Googles data centres since July 2008. Since Google signed on with Bloom Energy, quite a few other large corporations have readily joined the project, including Coca-Cola, eBay; Bank of America, FedEx, and Wal-Mart, by installing 500kWh Bloom Boxes each. EBay's CEO John Donahue said that the five Bloom Boxes installed on his campus in 9 months ago had saved the company more than $100,000 in electricity costs. Bloom Energy's versatile fuel cell technology is essentially a flexible energy platform, providing multiple benefits simultaneously for a wide range of applications. In addition to clean, reliable, affordable electricity, Bloom customers can realize a multitude of other advantages:

3)

4)

5)

Carbon Sequestration: The electrochemical reaction occurring within Bloom Energy systems generates electricity, heat, some H2O, and pure CO2. Traditionally, the most costly aspect of carbon sequestration is separating the CO2 from the other effluents. The pure CO2 emission allows for easy and costeffective carbon sequestration from the Bloom systems. Reverse Backup: Businesses often purchase generators, uninterruptible power supplies and other expensive backup applications that sit idle 99% of the time, while they purchase their electricity from the grid as their primary source. The Bloom solution allows customers to flip that paradigm, by using the Energy Server as their primary power, and only purchasing electricity from the grid to supplement the output when necessary. Increased asset utilization leads to dramatically improved ROI for Bloom Energy's customers. Time to Power: The ease of placing Bloom Energy Servers across a broad variety of geographies and customer segments allows systems to be installed quickly, on demand, without the added complexity of cumbersome combined heat and power applications or large space requirements of solar. These systems' environmental footprint enables them to be exempt from local air permitting requirements, thus streamlining the approval process. Fast installation simply requires a concrete pad, a fuel source, and an internet connection. DC Power: Bloom systems natively produce DC power, which provides an elegant solution to efficiently power DC data centers and/or be the plug-and-play provider for DC charging stations for electric vehicles. Hydrogen Production: Bloom's technology, with its NASA roots, can be used to generate electricity and hydrogen. Coupled with intermittent renewable resources like solar or wind, Blooms future systems will produce and store hydrogen to enable a 24 hour renewable solution and provide a distributed

hydrogen fueling infrastructure for hydrogen powered vehicles.[4]

VII.

saved about $100,000 energy costs in just 9 months. Adobe too had saved $500,000 from its 1.2MW Bloom Energy Servers. [1][12]
TABLE I Cost savings of Bloom Energy Server/year (assuming full load operation)

SCOPE OF BLOOM ENERGY SERVER IN INDIA

Bloom energy server has a big scope in a country like India, where in 2009 over 300 million citizens had no access to electricity. Over one third of India's rural population lacked electricity, as did 6% of the urban population. Of those who did have access to electricity in India, the supply was intermittent and unreliable. In 2010, blackouts and power shedding interrupted irrigation and manufacturing across the country. The per capita average annual domestic electricity consumption in India in 2009 was 96 Wh in rural areas and 288 Wh in urban areas for those with access to electricity.
[11][7]

Parameter Name Fuel (Natural Gas) flow rate for 200 KW Bloom Energy Server Fuel energy in rate in KW (1 MMBTU CH4 = 293 KW) Fuel cost Electric output rate Efficiency Natural Gas -> Electricity

Value 1.032

Unit / description MMBTU/hr

302.376

KW

$13.81 242 80%

No Connection 45% >100 kWh 11% 50 - 100 kWh 11% <50 kWh 33%

Electricity cost in India Electricity produced revenue CO2 produced

$0.16 $38.72 0.773

1.032 MMBTU/hr KW Percent conversion of Natural Gas energy to electrical energy per KWh per hour lb/kWh, carbon neutral on Directed Biogas Per hr

Fig 7. Distribution of Household Monthly Electricity Consumption (2005). [7]

Bloom energy server can act as a boon for rural areas where it is troublesome to provide electricity through cables. Also it can be powered by biogas, which can be cheaply and easily made available in such areas. Apart from this when it comes to urban India, it can provide electricity to shopping malls, housing societies, corporate offices, like we have discussed in section VI. Table I given below gives detailed description of how much money can be saved if Bloom Energy Server is used. The fuel cost considered is current (2012) charges of MGL gas supply which is Rs. 33.10= $0.67 per kg. Also 1 MMBTU=20.22kg of natural gas. EBay from its 5 Energy Servers had

Run cost savings per bloom box (electricity revenue less fuel cost) Cost savings per year assuming 24X7 full load operation Capital cost (estimated minimum cost after projected reductions) Annual maintenance / operation cost Cost savings after maintenance costs Cost Savings per 1 household(considering electricity is supplied to 300 houses)

$24.91

$218211.6

per year

$800,000.00

for each 200 KW unit as a fraction of capital cost, per year per year

10%

$138211.6

$460.71 Per year = Rs.23035.27

Already, faced with crippling electricity shortages, price of electricity traded internally, touched Rs 7 (14.3 cents) per unit for base loads and around Rs 8.50 (17.34 cents) per unit during peak periods. In the situation of energy shortages, the country is increasing the use of diesel-based electricity, which is both expensive costs as high as Rs 15 (30.6 cents) per unit, and polluting. A Bloom box costs some $800,000 or about $8,000 per kilowatt. However, California offers a 20% subsidy. And then theres additional 30 percent federal government tax credit in US for "green" investments. The payback time on a Bloom box is thus about five years excluding the fuel charges. A similar plan can be implemented in India too, which will prove cost effective, more reliable and self sufficient source of electricity.

REFERENCES [1] LaMonica, Martin, Parsing fact from fiction with the Bloom Energy box, Cnet news, 2010. [2] Mitlitsky, Fred; Sridhar, K.R.; Gottmann, Matthias; and Venkataraman, Swaminathan, Method for the co-production of hydrogen and electricity in a high temperature electrochemical system, U.S. patent 08071246. [3] Sridhar, K. R.; McElroy, James F.; Finn, John E.; Mitlitsky, Fred; and Gottmann, Matthias , Method of optimizing operating efficiency of fuel cells, U.S. patent 08071241. [4] The Bloom Energy website. Available : http://www.bloomenergy.com [5] Schwartz, Ariel, How Does the Bloom Box Energy Server Work?, www.fastcompany.com, 2010. [6] Kanellos, Michael, Bloom vs. Solar: Which One Is Best?, http://www.wired.com/epicenter/, 2010. [7] Residential consumption of electricity in India, Background Paper of India: Strategies for Low Carbon Growth, Draft To World Bank, July, 2008 [8] Khan, T.H., Systematic Chemistry, Uttam Prakashan, Mumbai, First edition, 2007. [9] A. Boudghene Stambouli, E. Traversa, Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs): a review of an environmentally clean and efficient source of energy, University of Roma Tor Vergata, Department of Chemical Science and Technology, 2002. [10] Pricing and Infrastructure Costing for Supply and Distribution of CNG and ULSD to the Transport Sector in Mumbai, India, Tata Energy Research Institute, New Delhi. [11] Narasimha Rao, Stanford University, Girish Sant, Prayas Sudhir Chella Rajan, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, for Prayas Energy Group, An overview of Indian Energy Trends: Low Carbon Growth and Development Challenges, Pune,2009. [12] Mahanagar Gas Limited website. Available: www.mahanagargas.com.

VIII.

CONCLUSION

By above analysis we conclude that Bloom Energy Server is an eco friendly and cost effective source of energy and thus it is a better alternative for the already existing energy sources. The cost of electricity over a Bloom servers 10-year life is: $0.08/kWh to $0.10/kWh (when running as baseload for 24 hours a day), including 30% government incentives and assuming a $10/mmBTU natural gas. Without incentives, we calculate electricity would cost $0.146/kWh to $0.166/kWh, with about $0.1/kWh from system cost and about $0.066/kWh coming from fuel cost. This price is lower than average national cost of electricity which around $0.173/kWh. With little subsidies from government, like that one in U.S., the prices can be reduced further. Its not the savings that makes this Energy Server a better option, but its the eco-friendliness that does it. Bloom Energy Server is a green source of energy and reduces carbon emissions from 60 to 100%.When it comes to the developing countries like India, it is a technological boon. Thus by adopting Bloom energy Server India will bloom with prosperity.