Ballard of Canada, the usually over-hyped and always disappointing fuel-cell company, which was once the darling of the techie investor crowd - yesterday's Tesla motors, back when VCs actually funded something arguably more valuable to society than another social network. It is one of the last survivors of the hydrogen fuel cell boom, the one that never happened. But is Ballard, still grossly overpriced, a diamond in the rough, nowadays?
Here is the wiki blip on UTC and the "history" of another over-hyped company with an advanced technology ... which sounds a bit like Thermacore, in the sense of a corporate failure which has held back what "could have been" breakthrough energy technology... 'fonly ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTC_Power Here is the patent which they once owned - US 8673511 "Apparatus including sodium chlorate electrolysis cell connected by water cooled catalytic reactor to phosphoric acid fuel cell." Ballard now owns this gem. https://www.google.com/patents/US8673511 Abstract A sodium chloride electrolysis cell receives a portion of its electrical power from a phosphoric acid fuel cell which receives fuel at its anode inlet from a water cooled catalytic reactor that converts oxygen in the byproduct output of the sodium chlorate electrolysis cell to hydrogen and water.... At one time, there was evidence, which circulated on the internet - that this particular electrolysis cell, combined with a fuel cell, had actually performed in a closed-loop for an extended period of time, in the sense of being so perfectly efficient that power used for electrolysis was balanced by the power produced by the products of electrolysis converted to electricity in a fuel cell. The losses were covered by heat extraction from ambient. In fact, the first title of the patent - which the inventor, Vincitore - used was "Closed Loop Fuel Cell". They almost lost the patent by being so bold as to claim closed loop, so the title and claims were mollified. You may be thinking ... hmm... what if they had used heavy water? Would the increased nuclear reactivity guarantee that they could demonstrate the closed-loop operation in a reproducible way? Teaser. More to follow. Jones
<<attachment: winmail.dat>>
