Except the lead researcher is quoted as saying hydrogen:
“We were so surprised to see this happen, but each time we kept getting the exact same result, it was a eureka moment,” said lead researcher Dr Srikanth Mateti.
“There is no waste, the process requires no harsh chemicals and creates no by-products. …This means you could store hydrogen anywhere and use it whenever it’s needed.”
“The current way of storing hydrogen is in a high-pressure tank, or by cooling the gas down to a liquid form. Both require large amounts of energy, as well as dangerous processes and chemicals,” said Professor Chen.
The absorption method described in the research article is dependent on the existence of pairs of carbon atoms with multiple bonds between them.
It is clearly stated that the gases with simple bonds between carbon and hydrogen or carbon and carbon are not absorbed. The 2 atoms in dihydrogen have a simple bond very similar to that between hydrogen and carbon.
So everything said in the research article is consistent with pure hydrogen not being absorbed by their powder.
Therefore it is quite certain that the reporter has misunderstood and distorted the quotation from the researcher.
Also, there are well known methods of storing pure hydrogen by absorption in solids, e.g. using palladium or rare-earth intermetallic compounds, like in the NiMH rechargeable batteries, but those methods are not suited for large-scale storage due to high cost or other limitations.
So the quotation from the researcher would have been wrong anyway, because high pressures or low temperatures are not the only ways to store dihydrogen, so a comparison of advantages and disadvantages with all methods would have been needed.
“We were so surprised to see this happen, but each time we kept getting the exact same result, it was a eureka moment,” said lead researcher Dr Srikanth Mateti.
“There is no waste, the process requires no harsh chemicals and creates no by-products. …This means you could store hydrogen anywhere and use it whenever it’s needed.”
“The current way of storing hydrogen is in a high-pressure tank, or by cooling the gas down to a liquid form. Both require large amounts of energy, as well as dangerous processes and chemicals,” said Professor Chen.