CELL POWER.Last June, engineers from Plug Power threw a switch and disconnected a small Latham, New York Latham is a hamlet in Upstate New York. It is located along US 9 in the Town of Colonie, a dense suburb north and west of Albany. The latitude of Latham's center is 42.746N. The longitude is 73.759W. ranch house from the power grid. The house didn't go dark because it was powered by a fuel cell, a promising emissionfree technology that was invented in the 1830s, but is only now becoming practical for a range of uses, including "distributed" power for homes. Fuel cells (see "Beyond Batteries," November/December 1997) run on hydrogen, which can be extracted from natural gas, gasoline gasoline or petrol, light, volatile mixture of hydrocarbons for use in the internal-combustion engine and as an organic solvent, obtained primarily by fractional distillation and "cracking" of petroleum, but also obtained from natural gas, by , methanol methanol, methyl alcohol, or wood alcohol, CH3OH, a colorless, flammable liquid that is miscible with water in all proportions. Methanol is a monohydric alcohol. It melts at −97. or other sources. Instead of burning the fuel, they chemically produce electricity from it, with only water vapor as a byproduct by·prod·uct or by-prod·uct n. 1. Something produced in the making of something else. 2. A secondary result; a side effect. Noun 1. . Interestingly enough, another company, International Fuel Cells/ONSI, powered a house with the same technology back in the 1960s. Fuel cells are touted as the "future power" for automobiles, but ONSI ONSI Orion Network Systems, Inc is now the main player in what is, called "stationary" power, and has delivered several hundred 200-kilowatt power plants to customers. If trends continue, home fuel cell power could; become a big contender in 12110/(518)782-7700. |
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