The internet has been abuzz with excitement (?) about the 60 Minutes segment from Sunday night touting the Bloom Box as "An Energy Breakthrough?" The question mark in this case doesn't so much indicate a journalist's natural skepticism as it does 60 Minutes helplessness when confronted with science, throwing up their hands in frustration. They are saying, "Hey, this guy says its an energy breakthrough, and we aren't smart enough to suss out whether or not he's full of shit so, uh, maybe?"

Fuel cells are the scheisters of the alternative energy world, milking investors of dollars with promises to be the Next Big Thing while, time after time, failing to do anything big. If PT Barnum was a scientist, he would have been big into fuel cells (no less an example of a fool being born every minute than George W. Bush declared the hydrogen economy to be the future of our energy infrastructure in his 2003 State of the Union address).


Quick primer: a fuel cell is a device that converts hydrogen and oxygen into electricity and water vapor. The heart of the fuel cell is a membrane coated with a catalyst where the reaction takes place, and sandwiched between two metal plates across which voltage is generated. Oxygen and hydrogen are introduced to opposite sides of this membrane, and the catalyst promotes a reaction where the electron is stripped off the hydrogen atom to be passed on as electricity.

The science is simple. Making it work in the real world is hard. Nowhere is that more evident than at around the 6:00 mark on the video. Watch: first, the inventor, K.R. Sridhar, is holding a flat disk with green "ink" on one side and black "ink" on the other side (we'll get back to that in a minute). "This is a fuel cell?" Leslie Stahl asks with a proper amount of incredulity. "This is a fuel cell," confirms Sridhar.

Now go to 6:45, when we get to see an ACTUAL fuel cell: a huge metal box the size of two refrigerators. Sridhar opens it up, and we get a glimpse of the internal workings.

Listen: there is a good reason they are called fuel cells, and that is because they have much in common with biological cells. They require fuel and oxygen; they generate waste that must be removed (water vapor); and they generate heat, and must have their temperature controlled. Plus, they are super finicky: if they get too dry or too wet, they don't work. If they get too hot or too cold, they don't work. If you give it fuel unevenly, they don't work.

So the huge box, with all the insulation and wiring, is to make a fuel cell work over a wide range of conditions over a long period of time. And they DO have to work for a long time: according to the piece, eBay claims that 5 units, each costing $700-800K, have saved them $100,000 in energy over 9 months. Quick math shows that it will take 25-30 years of operations for the fuel cells to save enough electricity to pay for themselves and break even.

Bloom claims that their technology is different. I say they are trying to pull a fast one. Let's take a closer look:

Looking at one of the boxes, Sridhar told Stahl it could power an average U.S. home.

"The way we make it is in two blocks. This is a European home. The two put together is a U.S. home," he explained.

We already know this is not true, because it has none of the other equipment we saw in the big box (the balance of plant, or BOP). It makes for a nice photo op to hold a tiny little box and say it will power your home like magic. It is also lies. In fact, the word "magic" comes up multiple times in the article.

He invented a new kind of fuel cell, which is like a very skinny battery that always runs. Sridhar feeds oxygen to it on one side, and fuel on the other. The two combine within the cell to create a chemical reaction that produces electricity. There's no need for burning or combustion, and no need for power lines from an outside source.

Maybe he has invented a new kind of fuel cell, but the fuel cell that was just described is how every fuel cell ever made runs.

Given the stealthiness, we were surprised when Sridhar showed us - for the very first time - how he makes the "secret sauce" of his fuel cell on the cheap.

He said he bakes sand and cuts it into little squares that are turned into a ceramic. Then he coats it with green and black "inks" that he developed.

Attention Leslie Stahl: he hasn't shown you anything about the secret sauce. The inks are the secret sauce, but they are presented as though they are the solution. And the whole painting magic "inks" of different colors on either sides looks to me like the part of a magic trick where you distract your audience with flash while the trick is happening under your nose. Here's my guarantee: the black and the green coloring is so that they can remember which ink goes on which side, and that ink is how the catalyst is applied. Behold the conclusion of the trick:

One disk powers one light bulb; the taller the stack of disks, the more power it generates. In between each disk there's a metal plate, but instead of platinum, Sridhar uses a cheap metal alloy.

Sridhar is trying to convince you that he's made a fuel cell without platinum, the super expensive catalytic material that has made it so hard for them to be financially viable. Except those metal plates on either side of the disk are in EVERY fuel cell, and they are NEVER platinum. Ever. The platinum is not a huge flat plate: it is micrograms of the stuff sprayed onto the central membrane. His fuel cell has platinum: it is in the inks. I guarantee it.

And therein lies the problem with fuel cells. Platinum is super expensive, and there is no getting around it. The fuel cell reaction does not take place unless it is catalyzed, and nothing catalyzes better than platinum. Maybe Sdridhar has cracked that problem; the $800k price tag - the same price tag of every other fuel cell already commercially available - tells me otherwise.

To make power, you'd still need fuel. Many past fuel cells failed because they needed expensive pure hydrogen. Not this box.

"Our system can use fossil fuels like natural gas. Our system can use renewable fuels like landfill gas, bio-gas," Sridhar told Stahl. "We can use solar."

Check this out: every fuel cell can use natural gas, landfill gas, and solar. Because those are all fuels that can be converted into hydrogen. While there are technologies that can run directly on other hydrocarbons, if Sridhar is saying his fuel cell can run on solar, then it needs pure hydrogen just like the fuel cells that have failed before. Solar is converted into hydrogen through electrolysis of water. Natural gas, landfill gas, and other renewable fuels are converted to hydrogen through a process called reforming. That big refrigerator box had a reformer in it to convert fuel into hydrogen.

I could continue, but I think you get the point. Sridhar is nothing more than a con man selling nerve tonic to a public that he thinks is too stupid to know any better. His fuel cell is like every other fuel cell ever made: big, expensive, and overhyped. If you are waiting to purchase a $3,000 Bloom Box to power your home, don't hold your breath. And if you are looking for a place to invest your money when his company goes public, don't just walk in the other direction. Run.