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Another Hydrogen Perpetual Motion Machine, Steam Reforming of Methanol to Make Hydrogen.
Of course, perpetual motion machines don't exist, but all the hydrogen bullshit that's been handed out for the last 50 years certainly seems to encourage really, really bad thinking, which given how wasteful it is, is not a good thing in these times.
It came to mind when I came across this paper: A Joule Heating-Driven Flow-Through SiC Catalytic Membrane Microreactor for Hydrogen Production from Methanol Steam Reforming Huiyun Huang, Shengchi Bai, Bailin Zhao, Ke Bai, Jingyun Liu, Zeyi Xiao, and Senqing Fan, Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research 2025 64 (24), 11868-11878.
To the credit of the authors, they come right out to say that one can make methanol from hydrogen and then make hydrogen from methanol, a process that further degrades the already thermodynamically degraded hydrogen. The point is that hydrogen's horrible physical properties suck - something that's been pretty clear since the 19th century at least, so let's make something that doesn't suck, methanol, to convert it back to something that does suck.
From the introduction:
Hydrogen is widely regarded as a promising clean energy carrier. (1) However, its low volumetric energy density (0.01 MJ/L at 0 °C and 1 atm) significantly increases the storage and transportation costs. (2,3) In contrast, methanol possesses a high hydrogen density (99.8 g/L at room temperature) and offers safer, more economical storage and transport solutions. (4) Moreover, methanol can be produced from CO2 hydrogenation by using green hydrogen. Methanol steam reforming (MSR) for hydrogen production presents several advantages, including low energy consumption, high operational flexibility, and mild reaction conditions. (5,6) As a result, the in situ MSR has demonstrated great potential application in distributed hydrogen production systems, fuel cell vehicles, and emergency power supply systems. Conventional fixed-bed MSR reactors, which rely on catalyst particles packed within the catalytic bed, suffer from internal and external diffusion limitations as well as nonuniform flow. These issues lead to lower reaction intensity, increased reactor size, reduced catalyst utilization, and higher energy consumption. Research into novel reactor designs with microscale flow structures is critical for addressing these challenges to meet MSR for the application of distributed hydrogen production systems, fuel cell vehicles, and emergency power supply systems.
Sigh...
In the real world, as opposed to the fossil fuel greenwashing ads about trivial bourgeois fantasy toys, hydrogen buses, hydrogen cars, hydrogen planes, that one sees here and elsewhere, the manufacture of methanol is the 3rd largest industrial application for hydrogen, after ammonia synthesis, the second largest, and petroleum refining, the largest.
Recently in a post here, referring to an article that stated quite clearly that it's pretty stupid to waste whatever clean electricity there is (there isn't that much of it because of the successful vandalism of antinukes) to make hydrogen. It is cleaner to use the clean electricity as electricity. The post is here: Realistic (?) roles for hydrogen in the future energy transition.
A graphic therein demonstrated the current use for hydrogen. The quantity used for transportation is so small it had to be expanded on the circular graphic demonstrating how hydrogen is used. (0.030 MT of hydrogen, about 30,000 tons, a trivial amount, certainly not worth the production costs of the fossil fuel greenwashing ads placed here and elsewhere about "first" hydrogen trains, hydrogen buses, hydrogen cars, blah, blah, blah ad nauseum.
?as=webp
The caption:
a, The main routes for producing, distributing and storing hydrogen considered here, with some key use cases illustrated (Supplementary Note 3). b, Global primary energy supply split by energy source, global hydrogen production from all sources and global final energy demand split by sector275. c, The global share of sources for producing hydrogen28, coloured according to supply in part b. d, The global share of end-use sectors in hydrogen demand28, coloured according to demand in part b, highlighting how it is almost exclusively used in industry. All data cover 2022. Hydrogen is a versatile energy carrier that can be produced, distributed and consumed in many ways, but is currently a small component of the global energy system and largely produced from fossil fuels. CCS, carbon capture and storage.
Source: Johnson, N., Liebreich, M., Kammen, D.M. et al. Realistic roles for hydrogen in the future energy transition. Nat. Rev. Clean Technol. 1, 351–371 (2025).
Note that the authors are not really calling this a perpetual machine, since they clearly have identified an energy input, Joule heating, thus making the thermodynamic, and thus economic and environmental, costs even higher than the already unacceptable thermodynamic, economic and environmental costs of hydrogen, which are already disastrously unacceptable.
It's actually a perpetual exergy destruction machine, that is something which in practice, on inspection, will make things worse, not better.
Have a nice day tomorrow.