1 Megawatt Fuel Cell Power Plant
Written on 06/10 at 03:01 AM by Andy Posner
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This is a video about a 1 megawatt Fuel Cell Power Plant at California State University, Northridge, in Los Angeles, CA. The power plant has a reformer that separates hydrogen from natural gas and then feeds the hydrogen into a fuel cell, generating electricity. The plant also recovers the heat generated and uses it for domestic heating on campus. In the future, some of the carbon emitted will be sequestered in a sub-tropical rainforest that is under construction.
While at present this power plant still uses fossil fuels, it does not actually burn them (the natural gas is needed in order to extract the hydrogen from it), and in the future the hydrogen will be generated either from landfill gas, or it will be electrolyzed using wind, solar, geothermal, wave or hydroelectric energy. What is most important and exciting about this plant is the fact that it is using fuel cells--touted to be the future of electricity generation--today, and they are working seamlessly on a large scale. (continue reading)
The power plant was manufactured by Fuel Cell Energy, Inc. Yet another of its benefits is that it is made in the USA and uses domestic resources. Compared to a coal-fired power plant, the fuel cell system is more efficient (43% compared to 33% on the electrical side, and 80% compared to 30% when the heat recovery is taken into account. What heat recovery does is it uses the heat generated from the fuel cell to heat water for the campus, thereby eliminating the need to use more energy to head that water). Also, the exhaust is almost entirely CO2 and water, whereas burning coal releases other harmful pollutants that are mentioned in the movie. But most importantly, this has the potential to be an entirely fossil-fuel-free technology.
Watch Bill Sullivan, Energy Manager at California State University at Northridge, explain how the power plant works and why its so much better than a normal power plant!
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