99.99% pure hydrogen fuel from methanol-water mixture

thestatesman.com

10 pointsbcrl3 comments

Why bother with this?

CH3OH + H2O -> 3H2 + CO2

This hydrogen is not green. The world needs the opposite of this.

Why not just burn the methanol?

Methanol can be produced easily and sustainably from renewable plant matter. Producing electricity directly from hydrogen should be more efficient than burning methanol to produce steam to drive a turbine that drives a generator to produce electricity. While batteries can handle many use-cases, there will always be a need for fuel that can be transported to remote communities.

There's some important information missing from this article.

How much methane was in the mixture? By what calculation is the density of Hydrogen 40kwh/kg? Shouldn't that be closer to 33kwh?

17 kWhr/kg of electricity per kg is a pretty great number, but impossible to know if that's a real improvement without knowing how much methane had to go in to it too.

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