I don't think you need to go through methane to get from hydrogen to methanol, you just synthesize methanol directly once you have the hydrogen. In fact, most m

I don't think you need to go through methane to get from hydrogen to methanol, you just synthesize methanol directly once you have the hydrogen. In fact, most methanol is made by splitting hydrogen from natural gas first. This is more useful for producing methanol from biogas (i.e. waste facilities), since the gas is produced by bacteria as part of the natural decay process. It's an alternative to producing methane catalytically from hydrogen.