extracting hydrogen from syngas, page-5

Lots of R&D continuing on this topic. I think a main problem is stability of the membranes at high temperatures and low permeability of the membrane. So overall costs are still high and I think this is a fair way off.

Also, hydrogen is an energy carrier really, so what do you do with it??

You need an infrastructure to move it around and get it to a place of use. That's all technically possible, but not in place yet. When talking about hydrogen powered cars I think it will be a while yet and may not take off.

For large scale hydrogen use - ie in petro-chemicals, steam reforming of natural gas is often cheapest, though gasification of heavy feedstocks - ie oil residue, coal - is also used. In China for example coal gasification is used a lot.