Yttrium and zirconium
A bargain compared to Unicorn pee printer ink
Danish boffins have hacked – comprehensively hacked, since the work involves extensive case-modding – an HP inkjet, turning it into a device that can print fuel cells. The work was carried out at the Danish Technical University's Energy Conversion program, and creates solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) without needing expensive …
<2 micron layer thickness in ceramics is pretty good.
SOFC's run at (fairly) high temperatures and so can "crack" longer chain molecules to Hydrogen, making them multi fuel.
Handy given what a b**ger H2 is to generate and store.
Thumbs up for this clever bit of re-purposing.
I wonder. Is pixel skipping down to the budget print controller? Could a few electronic tweaks fix it?
I've long argued that SOFCs are going to become blindingly cheap. Admittedly, I'm very biased on this. The very finest material to use is scandia/yttria stabilised zirconia (9 mole % Sc, 2 mole % Y for those keeping score at home) and, as regular readers around here will know, I supply scandium to peeps.
And if you can just print them out on ink jets then there's really not going to be anything very expensive about them. And given these thicknesses they're achieving the materials cost will be pretty low too.
And here's the thing about making these cells cheap. If you can do the same with solar cells (I would be willing to wager a price in a decade of 10 to 20 cents a W, as opposed to 80 cents to a $ now) then you've got the building blocks of a hydrogen economy. Sure, it's wasteful to electrolyse water with the solar power, then run it back through the cell. But if it's all cheap enough then that doesn't matter: you've now transformed unreliably available renewables into on demand power.
Which does rather solve that climate change problem, doesn't it?
I'm hanging back from nailing the current PV panels onto my roof I'm waiting for the the Infrared ones
Didn't we evolve to see in what we now call the "visible light spectrum" because that's where the most energy is available to see with? So in other words there isn't as much solar energy available outside that spectrum? What am I missing with you wanting IR panels?
"Yep, there is this obscure patent filing from crApple covering the tech."
No, no... They're printing onto paper with square, pointy corners. Apple only patented the rounded corner rectangle.
Of course there is still the whole printing angle they could come back on. They did use an HP Deskjet, and we all know the last of the Stylewriters were HP Deskjets. Given the US patent system, that's a valid patent right there. Just some paperwork to fill in and Apple will be the proud owner of a patent on inkjet printing.
Also include the ancillary costs of compliance for US here in everyone-is-free-land: zoning and home-owner association permit fees for rooftop installations; home-inspection fees for same; public utility metering fees; annual fire & safety inspection fees for rooftop/interface/storage systems; quarterly tax filings for metered income-equivalency earnings; city/county/state impact fees (infrastructure amelioration and in-lieu of tax payments legislation); and so on.
Don't be trying to evade $$ owing to the established regulatory scheme of things.
"Also include the ancillary costs of compliance for US here in everyone-is-free-land..."
Tell me about it. I noticed our township has a bucketload of ordinances on solar panels alone.
Thankfully, we have no homeowner association to contend with. We refused to buy any home where the literal tyranny of a homeowner association exists.