New Delhi : Pune may have just delivered the breakthrough India’s clean-energy mission was waiting for. A team of researchers at MIT World Peace University (MIT-WPU) has developed a safer, cheaper way to transport hydrogen — solving what experts have long called the biggest bottleneck in India’s hydrogen future.
Their innovation: a Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carrier (LOHC) system that can store and move hydrogen in a non-flammable, non-explosive liquid form, at normal temperature and pressure. No 253°C cryogenic cooling. No ultra-high-pressure cylinders. No massive logistical bill. Just a stable liquid that behaves like any other industrial fuel.
To understand how big this is: labs worldwide need 18 hours to fully store hydrogen. MIT-WPU did it in just two. That places India straight into the top tier of global hydrogen innovation — and rewrites what’s possible for clean-energy technology.
A BREAKTHROUGH NOBODY ELSE COULD CRACK
The challenge arrived at MIT-WPU through Ohm Cleantech (OCPL), part of the h2e Power Group. Even IITs and global labs had struggled to find a workable method. There was no documented process anywhere in the world — meaning the team had to build a new scientific pathway from scratch.
“The first fifty days showed no reaction at all, but we refused to step back,” said Prof. (Dr.) Rajib Kumar Sinharay, the project’s Principal Investigator. “Nearly ten months and close to a hundred trials later, we crossed a milestone that had never been achieved anywhere.”
For OCPL, this was the exact breakthrough India needed. Founder Siddharth Mayur said the innovation supports the National Green Hydrogen Mission, while reinforcing India’s aim for technological self-reliance. Patent filings are already underway.
WHY HYDROGEN TRANSPORT IS SUCH A NIGHTMARE
Hydrogen is one of the cleanest fuels available — but also one of the hardest to handle. Today, it’s either:
- compressed into cylinders at hundreds of bars of pressure, or
- liquefied at –253°C, requiring expensive cryogenic infrastructure.
Both processes are risky, costly, and infrastructure-heavy — a major reason India’s hydrogen rollout has been slow.
MIT-WPU’s LOHC method sidesteps all of this.
So how does LOHC make hydrogen “behave” like a normal liquid?
The team engineered a two-stage chemical pathway:
- Hydrogenation: Hydrogen bonds into a specially designed organic liquid, becoming part of a stable, easy-to-handle fluid.
- Dehydrogenation: At the destination, hydrogen is released, and the carrier liquid can be reused.
This means hydrogen can now be moved using existing petrol/diesel tankers, standard storage containers, and potentially even pipelines — dramatically cutting both cost and risk.
“Being able to transport hydrogen like any other industrial liquid removes long-standing safety and regulatory barriers,” said Prof. Datta Dandge, Research Advisor.
INDIA JUMPS AHEAD WITH WORLD-LEADING RESULTS
The MIT-WPU team didn’t just solve the problem — they outperformed existing global benchmarks.
Key achievements:
- 2-hour hydrogen storage, compared to the global average of 18 hours
- Lower operating temperature: 130°C (vs 170°C typical)
- Lower pressure: 56 bar (vs higher global norms)
- Storage efficiency: 11,000 litres of hydrogen in just 15.6 litres of carrier liquid
- Recovery efficiency: 86% hydrogen successfully released
These results place India at the forefront of LOHC research globally — a milestone for both clean-energy science and industrial practicality.
BUILT IN PUNE, AIMED AT NATIONAL IMPACT
The research was carried out in MIT-WPU’s advanced hydrogen lab, equipped to operate at up to 350°C and 200 bar. Scaling up for industrial deployment is already the next step.
For Project Fellow Nishant Patil, the experience has been transformative: “Working on a breakthrough with national impact has been a defining experience,” he said, adding that it strengthened his resolve to contribute to India’s clean-energy future.
WHY THIS MATTERS FOR INDIA
If adopted at scale, this technology could reshape:
- hydrogen transport and storage
- clean mobility and heavy transport fuels
- industrial decarbonisation
- national hydrogen infrastructure
It directly supports the National Green Hydrogen Mission and boosts India’s chances of becoming a global hydrogen hub.
In simple terms: India may have just solved hydrogen’s biggest barrier — and the solution came from a lab in Pune.
