So the US government’s Department of Energy has been looking for ways to make it as safe and easy to pump as gasoline. The solution, according to one of its latest patent applications, could be to store it in tiny glass balls.

The proposed glass microspheres would each be a few millionths of a metre (microns) wide with a hollow centre containing specks of palladium. The walls of each sphere would also have pores just a few ten-billionths of a metre in diameter.

Placing the microspheres in a tank filled with hydrogen gas under pressure should cause the gas to seep through the pores to be absorbed by the palladium. The spheres could then be used to safely store and transport the hydrogen, which could be sucked back out using heat or vacuum pressure.

The glass spheres should be so small and slippery that they ought to flow through pipes like a liquid, the patent says. In addition, the hydrogen should be so tightly locked inside the spheres that there would be no risk of explosion or fire if a leak occurs.

Read the full patent, here.