Another Hydrogen Perpetual Motion Machine, Steam Reforming of Methanol to Make Hydrogen.

[NNadir]

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.

[John ONeill]

1. Michael Liebreich

Michael Liebreich, one of the authors of the hydrogen paper, is a British businessman involved in promoting 'green' projects - he founded Bloomberg New Energy Finance, then sold it to Michael Bloomberg. He runs a weekly podcast, 'Cleaning Up', and regularly baits hydrogen promoters on their lack of prospects. He wrote (on ex-Twitter) that he didn't want resources spent on an H2 supply chain that would later prove wasted. When I suggested the same might apply to wind and solar, I was summarily blocked. Liebreich actually did nuclear engineering (and fluid mechanics) at Cambridge; he has ties to the Conservative Party, but now they're trending against wind farms says he might be left homeless politically. His fellow podcast host, Briony Worthington, is much more pro-nuclear, though she's still enamoured with the usual green stuff. ML is keen on running an undersea power cable from Morocco to Britain, to power the latter when it's Dunkelflauted - he's even put money into the scheme!

[NNadir]

2. When the fossil fuel greenwasher who showed up here to run ads to rebrand fossil fuels as "hydrogen," he, she or they...

...suggested that nuclear power could be used to make hydrogen. I was on MIRT then but recused myself since I oppose fossil fuels and efforts to greenwash them, but there are people here, regrettably, who have bought into this 50 year old thermodynamic nightmare and scam.

When I pointed out that it was a terrible idea to waste clean energy, of which there is but one form, nuclear energy, to make hydrogen that any sane person would oppose, that person began running antinuke crap here along with fossil fuel ads that marketed fossil fuels as "green hydrogen" which essentially doesn't exist.

Hydrogen has horrible physical properties, and the 50 year old cults claiming it's sustainable and "green" are doing great damage, and I think that many of them realize as much but market this crap anyway.

An Exxon ad that's a little more obvious than the slick ads run here:

It is essentially a natural gas ad, without mentioning that hydrogen, a filthy fuel in the rare cases it is used as fuel, has been made from natural gas from almost a century, coupled to exergy destruction and making climate issues worse. The greenwashing is only hidden to a minor extent, since they mention in the ad that Baytown will use natural gas to make hydrogen, a little less slick than the hydrogen ads run here about 'China" where hydrogen is overwhelmingly produced from coal.

"Green hydrogen" is essentially "Green Exxon," basically an appalling bald lie.

I note that natural gas actually has superior physical properties to hydrogen, a higher temperature critical point, less metal embrittlement risk, higher viscosity and lower explosive limits, which is not to say that natural gas is acceptable - it isn't - but merely that making hydrogen from natural gas to fuel, well, anything, is a very, very, very, very stupid idea.