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http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/technik/brennstoffzellen-erzeugen-aus-erdgas-eine-ganze-menge-strom-a-927427.html
Fuel Cells: Revolution in the boiler room
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Who only uses natural gas for heating, uses the fuel value of, say researchers. Fuel produced from natural gas in addition a whole lot of power. However, the current heat-double has its price.

When we are cold, we light a fire. Since modern man does not differ from the Paleolithic Homo erectus that fuels his camp fire with gas central heating. However, after 800,000 years gets this proven design competition now: by fuel cell systems, that do without combustion.

Hot they make houses anyway - with the help of a simple chemical reaction. In the fuel cell, hydrogen from the air combines with oxygen to form water. Releasing heat. winning the hydrogen from natural gas plants, which they receive from the gas network. This is done by a so-called reformer turns hydrocarbons from the natural gas by the catalyst to hydrogen.

The fuel cells are really interesting but only by another effect: The reaction produces only heat also electricity. The cells convert up to 60 percent of the energy contained in the natural gas into electricity. Compared to the separate generation of electricity and heat, the plants emit half as much carbon dioxide.

Despite a current subsidy business

Fuel cell systems could thus bring the efficiency of modern gas-fired power plants in the boiler room, but the power-heat-double has its price: Homeowners must be at least three times to pay for the fuel cell technology as much as for a modern gas heating.

The current, in addition to the fuel cell to generate heat, the extra cost at the current prices can not make up. Because the plants suffer from a fundamental problem: If they run in winter in full swing, they usually deliver more power than the residents need. Dine then the excess energy into the grid, they get it just four cents per kilowatt hour. In the summer, then enters the reverse case: the current efficiency drops off rapidly as households barely consume heat.

Some manufacturers place their facilities thus not the heat, but to the power requirements of the building - the devices to the basement power plant, which still generates some heat in passing. A small peak-load gas boiler then ensures that no one has to freeze in winter. However, these systems remain without public funding mostly a business grant. The investment costs are just too high.

Requirement for promotion

Bernd Emonts from Forschungszentrum Jülich, however, is convinced that the technology can still make up ground in the cost. "The cost of fuel cell heating will decrease if manufacturers produce them in large quantities," explains the scientist. So far, the devices are produced largely by hand.

"We find it in Germany traditionally difficult to bring fundamentally new technologies from research laboratories into practice," says Werner Tillmetz by the Centre for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (STW). Examples in the field of IT and mobile enough to admit it already. "That should not happen to us in the fuel cell."

Manufacturers such as Viessmann, Vaillant, Baxi, Bosch Ceramic Fuel Cells or thermal equipment demand has long been a nationwide, limited-time promotion program, which facilitates the homeowners to invest. North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse and Saxony support the purchase of a fuel cell device already.

From outer space to the boiler room

Fuel cells are not a new invention. Even the Apollo space shuttles of the sixties, some of the small power packs on board. At the 2000 Olympics in Sydney General Motors sent an electric car as a support vehicle on the marathon course, provided the current in the fuel cell. The drive technology was on the verge of mass production, it was then called.

But only now the carmaker dare to larger quantities. In two years, Hyundai will be the first manufacturer to a fuel cell car in a small series on the market. process, the Korean car manufacturer should provide a head-to-head race with Toyota. The Japanese plan their hybrid model range 2015 to expand a vehicle with fuel cells.

The heating systems manufacturer could benefit from this development. "It creates synergies when fuel cells in other markets, such as in the automotive industry to prevail This applies to both the production and for the advancement of technology -., Industries can learn from each other," says Emonts fuel cell researchers
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