LOS ANGELES – The nation's first compressed-hydrogen fueling station for public use will be built at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), reports Sustainable Business News. Los Angeles Board of Airport Commissioners approved a lease to Praxair, Inc. of Danbury, Conn., which design, engineer, equip, construct, and operate a 600-square-foot prototype facility. The $1.58 million state-of-the-art fueling station will be the first facility in the United States to showcase the generation, compression, storage, and dispensing of compressed-hydrogen fuel in a limited-production capacity, retail-friendly environment. Praxair is funding construction with $550,000 of its own funds and will receive grants of $351,000 from the South Coast Air Quality Management District, $499,048 from the U.S. Department of Energy, and $180,000 from British Petroleum. The new fueling station will support the recent introduction of hydrogen-fuel-cell demonstration vehicles by major automotive manufacturers, as well as Los Angeles World Airports’ integration of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles into its own fleet. The new fueling station will be built on a portion of an on-airport, alternative-fuel vehicles site on World Way West, where facilities for dispensing liquefied and compressed natural gas (LNG/CNG) already exist.