If this technique could use seawater (rather than the "water-methanol solution") and sunlight (rather than the "light from a mercury/xenon lamp") as its primary inputs, then it could have real potential. Place a scaled-up reactor near the shoreline and use it to generate both electricity and fresh water from solar power! Pipe dream?

Distillation energy is negligible compared to hydrogen reaction energy so fresh or salt water is irrelevant. Even fresh water has hundreds of times the availability of fuel.

"While this technique still requires the splitting of water – far from an infinite resource – to create hydrogen" Not too sure about the "far from an infinite resource" comment? Water is pretty common on Earth!!

Soooo, which is it then, a common form of rust, or a special type of rust? Maybe a special common form of rust? How is it made? Are any expensive catalysts or processes used to make it?
How much energy is used to power the artificial light that is needed for this increased rate of reaction to take place? What is the cost of that portion of the system? What is the rate of amortization of it? Or do all of those extra things come cheaply because they all grow on trees found in Nature?

Randy

25x negligible could still be negligible, this story tells nowhere near enough information.
Hydrogen remains a diatomic gas which is both highly explosive and extremely difficult to seal, being the smallest molecule in existence. The tank has to be extremely high performance, holding thousands of PSI, as compared to tires which only hold about 30 psi. The problem of acetylene was solved by dissolving it in acetone and stabilizing it in a porous structure, but there is still no equivalent safe storage method for hydrogen. Plus no matter what you can't get past the potential of hydrogen to be misused as a bomb. I think ethanol still makes more sense, it's produced sustainably (no net contribution to atmospheric CO2) and burns with high equivalent octane and the resultant combustion is very gentle on internal combustion engines.

"water – far from an infinite resource" - what planet do you live on?

I'm with christopher in being wary about all these million new taps sucking up the ocean. Desalination and H plants would both be salting the waters. What's a fish to do? The only people who'd like that are those who think the sea level is going to rise 39 feet this century, but they might be busy screaming about the amount of H leaked into the atmo, creating more AGWK!

Grunchy, it's my impression that hydrogen storage tanks can contain metal hydride salts, which hydrogen dissolves in, reducing the storage pressure..

I also agree with Expanded Viewpoint that this is a very poorly written article, and it makes me wonder about New Atlas.

Having worked on the 'hydrogen highway' (that wasn't) I find the occasional, true, claim or observation in these comments. Some are comical, (no, you can't use hydrogen to build an H-bomb without an A-bomb to ignite it!) hydrogens day will come, eventually, when everything else is gone.

"While this technique still requires the splitting of water – far from an infinite resource" --- Last time I looked, around three quarters of the planet's surface was covered in it to a depth of several kilometres. Added to which, when it's burned it goes back to being water again, so I don't quite understand the relevance of that comment!