However it depends on not just oxygen from the atmosphere but a “fuel”. What is that fuel...natural gas? ethanol? and where does it come from? Just how efficient is this invention at converting this fuel to electricity? To the science ignorant dolts on CBS news and coming from our public schools the article makes it seem as though this breakthrough runs on air.
> What is that fuel?
Yes, they really don’t make that obvious.
However, on page three of the online article, they state:
> Four units have been powering a Google datacenter for 18 months. They use natural gas, but half as much as would be required for a traditional power plant.
So the $750,000 fuel cell they sold Google runs on methane, and gets twice the fuel efficiency of a ‘traditional plant’
I presume they are referring to a standard turbine natural gas plant, because ‘combined cycle’ natural gas already gets 60% thermodynamic efficiency, and doubling that is impossible.