I think you guys are missing something. It sounds to me like the whole article is talking about a breakthrough in combining CO2 and hydrogen, into methane. Thus its not a perpetual motion machine. The hydrogen will be supplied outside of this process. That is the only thing that make sense to me.
“The hydrogen will be supplied outside of this process”
Of course hydrogen can be supplied at a cheap price. /s
As for the Hydrogen, you would likely get it from water, but you need energy to separate it. You could get it from H2S, which is interesting because its a byproduct of hydrocarbon refining.
Either way, you have to add energy here to get the hydrogen. Question is whether you could generate enough using solar to make it work at scale.
The earth is producing all kinds of DC power everyday, just by having its metal core turning within the magnetosphere - 186,000 lightening strikes a day.
I saw a video of a refueling tanker manifesting ‘St. Elmo’s Fire’ and the fuel nozzle arc’ing and sparking against the jet its trying to refuel.
Consider they are likely using JP-4, which is pretty flammable and not JP-5, which you could use to put out a cigarette.
Lot’s of free electrical energy out there. It’s just a matter of putting lightning in a bottle, as it were.