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Microcap & Penny Stocks : MECHANICAL TECHNOLOGY (MKTY)
MKTY 12.23+4.4%Nov 1 5:00 PM EST
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To: billkirn who wrote (296)7/17/1999 8:18:00 PM
From: Fun-da-Mental#1  Read Replies (1) of 542
 
Bill Kirn, I think I can give some approximate answers to your questions about fuel consumption. First of all, I think the existing fuel distribution system will have no problem keeping up with home electrical generating requirements, since the amount of energy required to heat a house in winter is more than the energy required for electrical uses, and there is already a distribution system in place to provide home furnace fuel. Granted there's no natural gas distribution system in the southern states, but if fuel cells can run off gasoline or heating oil then that can be easily distributed by tanker trucks.

More specifically, 1 kilowatt hour = 3.6 MegaJoules. The energy consumption of a typical house is 10 or 20 kwh per day, so that's about 50 MJ. This is about the amount of energy provided by burning a liter of gasoline. However not all this energy can be converted into electricity by a fuel cell, (a) because the fuel cell uses only the hydrogen part of the fuel and not the carbon, and (b) because the fuel cell is only 40-50 percent efficient. So a home fuel cell might end up using a couple of gallons of gasoline or oil per day. A gallon of gasoline has about the same energy as 100 cubic feet of natural gas. So a few hundred cubic feet of gas per day is not going to be a problem. These numbers are only approximate, but good enough for our purposes I think. Maybe Sid can give more accurate figures.

Fun-da-Mental
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