Hydrogen fuel goes liquid

Nitrogen unlocks the possibility of convenient clean fuels.

Katharine Sanderson

Forget trying to shove gaseous hydrogen into porous materials for safe storage: the future of the clean-fuel economy lies in carrying hydrogen in a liquid, argues Robert Crabtree of Yale University, New Haven.

This means that cars running on fuel cells, which run on hydrogen and oxygen and produce only water as a byproduct, could fill up at stations using roughly the same liquid-fuel infrastructure that already exists. High-pressure gaseous hydrogen, which is potentially dangerous, could be taken completely out of the public sphere. And there would be no need for totally new distribution networks and fuel-delivery systems.