Ethanol fuel cell to power a house

[jtbo]

As direct ethanol fuel cells are just about to enter the market, maybe it would be nice solution for generating electricity and heat to house?

Wiki seems not to have most recent news, but these days there starts to be small science fair units already and they have made breaktroughs so that it is very close of commercial product, that it at least what I did read from various sources. Information is bit here and there about this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct-ethanol_fuel_cell

Anyway, eventually those will come and then it might be nice to use solar heat to distill ethanol from garden waste, bio waste, maybe some biomaterial can be even bought for very low price to make ethanol, which one would burn in fuel cell and get electricity for the house, some heat too.

Problem in my country is that half of the year solar power is not available, so one would need to harvest it at the summer and storage of energy is an issue, but if one would make ethanol (which of course is illegal here, but don't tell anyone ), he could store 'sun' for winter and burn ethanol at fuel cell during the dark time of the year.

I have read that noble materials would not be used making cells so making costs might be under 200 for 1kW size unit, which is not very much.

Wind power is really not possible either as in land middle of forest there really is not enough wind, also huge structures might not be possible because of laws, one would need to again buy from someone 'professional' as many laws here try to make sure nobody does anything by himself, safety and such....

I find that ethanol fuel cell much more interesting than hydrogen fuel cell as ethanol is easy to store, hydrogen is not easy to store, lot more expensive storage is needed for hydrogen.

Also I think that making ethanol might be easier process.

I need to pay almost 20 euros each month to electric company even if I would not use any electricity, so if I can get rid of electric company it would add over 200 euros each year for something else, for example ethanol fuel cell and that is just base costs, add electricity to that and it is soon a lot more.

With battery pack smaller fuel cell would be sufficient, but then again batteries do cost a lot too, so it might be cheaper to get bigger fuel cell.

[euromodder]

For low volumes, you can often get under the legislative radar setting out the rules for industrial production and storage, though it obviously depends on local rules.

You don't need to make pure ethanol - which would be frowned upon - but you can make methanol or methanol/ethanol blends just as well when you're only going to burn it for heating.

[Varn]

About 10 years ago smaller propane supply companies were bought out by electric cooperatives around here as they thought that home sized (propane fueled) fuel cells were about to take off.

It didn't happen. What makes you think that fuel cells are going to take off?

[jtbo]

Research budget increase since 10 years ago?

There was also research in last 2 years where it was shown possible to make such fuel cell without rare materials and I believe research is focusing to improving that these days.

I'm not too concerned about it taking off, at least if I can get one into my basement.

What I'm interested in is that if it would be possible to make enough large that it is feasible to build one by yourself, that might be something interesting to keep eyes on in future. Some did say that one can't make even batteries at home, but surely that is perfectly possible.

[FieroChris]

I am interested if its feasible to put one in a Electric Vehicle to extend the range of the batteries.... propane fired ??

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Maybe a direct-ethanol fuel-cell could be a reasonable option for me. Almost everytime there's some heavy rain with winds there's an electric power shortage in my neighborhood.