Storing hydrogen in oil-like liquid could allow easy transport in trucks and ships
As a fuel, hydrogen has one major attraction. When it burns or powers a fuel cell, it creates only water—and no climate-warming carbon dioxide. After that, the caveats start. To ship it or store it, the gas must be crushed under intense pressures or liquefied at ultracold temperatures, which raises costs. Now, researchers report the discovery of a cheap catalyst that adds hydrogen atoms to oil-like molecules that are liquid at ambient temperature and pressure. That means hydrogen could be stored and shipped in existing tanks, trucks, and pipelines, much like gasoline. “This is a significant step forward,” says Peter Wasserscheid, a chemist at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. The new catalyst, reported on 10 July in Nature Energy ...