Hello again. It’s still great weather here, they really do a good job picking venues for this show, next year it’s at Palm Springs, California in mid November. I’m sure there will be lots of people ready to come and man the booth for that one.
Wednesday was technical papers all day, with the exhibit hall open most of the day too, so there was plenty for us both to do. Bruce got the short straw of sitting in the booth all day (although he did meet a couple of real characters, ask him next time you talk to him!!), while I visited a few of the technical sessions to hear the papers.
The speakers in the SOFC session in the morning were all from the major European institutions ( Fz Julich, Topsoe/Riso, Wartsila, Fraunhofer Institute). All were very interesting papers, showing a diversity of fuels for the cell (including biogas from landfill, which I assume to be basically free fuel), and a variety of approaches. It was interesting for me to see these papers and contrast them with the papers on the previous afternoon. Again the SOFC papers attracted about 200 people to listen to them, which in my view is pretty impressive.
The rest of the day was some more SOFC papers from Japanese authors and then a session on other higher temperature fuel cells. The progress made by FCE is impressive; they have some Mega Watt units out there providing reliable stationary power sources.
While Bruce thought I was still at the papers I sneaked out and took advantage of one of the nice side events here. They had five fuel cell cars available for show participants to drive around a few of the streets of Phoenix. They had cars from Honda, Hyundai, Daimler Benz, Chevy (GM) and Toyota. The line for the new Honda Clarity was long, it’s a really sleek looking car, nothing like the hybrids you see these days (Prius etc), it’s a real head turner. So I took one of the short lines and drove around the city in a Hyundai Tucson. It was a nice drive, I turned off the radio and the a/c fan (to the displeasure of the Hyundai rep in the car with me) to listen to how quiet it really was – all you could hear was either a pump or a fan under the hood. Also, it felt like it had the power of a normal Internal Combustion Engine car, these things have truly come a long way, if there was a Hydrogen refueling network, I think we would see these cars on the road in the next few year (but there isn’t, so we are stuck in a chicken or egg situation ….).
After the papers (and the sneaky drive) I went back into the hall to give Bruce a hand. I managed to visit a few booths as well to see what other people are doing and to get a feel for how quickly they think things are moving towards commercialization. The penalty for being away from the booth was I missed the afternoon free beer, by the time I got back, they were wheeling the kegs away and I’d missed out (I wasn’t too upset, it was only Budweiser).
After the free beer was done things slowed down, I think everyone is running out of energy, there’s only one more day of the show to go now. Tomorrow has a variety of papers and a shorter expo day as we get to break down the booth in the late afternoon.
Check out tomorrow’s final blog for updates on Thursday’s papers and events and my thoughts on the show as a whole.
Cheers
Steve
Wednesday was technical papers all day, with the exhibit hall open most of the day too, so there was plenty for us both to do. Bruce got the short straw of sitting in the booth all day (although he did meet a couple of real characters, ask him next time you talk to him!!), while I visited a few of the technical sessions to hear the papers.
The speakers in the SOFC session in the morning were all from the major European institutions ( Fz Julich, Topsoe/Riso, Wartsila, Fraunhofer Institute). All were very interesting papers, showing a diversity of fuels for the cell (including biogas from landfill, which I assume to be basically free fuel), and a variety of approaches. It was interesting for me to see these papers and contrast them with the papers on the previous afternoon. Again the SOFC papers attracted about 200 people to listen to them, which in my view is pretty impressive.
The rest of the day was some more SOFC papers from Japanese authors and then a session on other higher temperature fuel cells. The progress made by FCE is impressive; they have some Mega Watt units out there providing reliable stationary power sources.
While Bruce thought I was still at the papers I sneaked out and took advantage of one of the nice side events here. They had five fuel cell cars available for show participants to drive around a few of the streets of Phoenix. They had cars from Honda, Hyundai, Daimler Benz, Chevy (GM) and Toyota. The line for the new Honda Clarity was long, it’s a really sleek looking car, nothing like the hybrids you see these days (Prius etc), it’s a real head turner. So I took one of the short lines and drove around the city in a Hyundai Tucson. It was a nice drive, I turned off the radio and the a/c fan (to the displeasure of the Hyundai rep in the car with me) to listen to how quiet it really was – all you could hear was either a pump or a fan under the hood. Also, it felt like it had the power of a normal Internal Combustion Engine car, these things have truly come a long way, if there was a Hydrogen refueling network, I think we would see these cars on the road in the next few year (but there isn’t, so we are stuck in a chicken or egg situation ….).
After the papers (and the sneaky drive) I went back into the hall to give Bruce a hand. I managed to visit a few booths as well to see what other people are doing and to get a feel for how quickly they think things are moving towards commercialization. The penalty for being away from the booth was I missed the afternoon free beer, by the time I got back, they were wheeling the kegs away and I’d missed out (I wasn’t too upset, it was only Budweiser).
After the free beer was done things slowed down, I think everyone is running out of energy, there’s only one more day of the show to go now. Tomorrow has a variety of papers and a shorter expo day as we get to break down the booth in the late afternoon.
Check out tomorrow’s final blog for updates on Thursday’s papers and events and my thoughts on the show as a whole.
Cheers
Steve
No comments:
Post a Comment