Isn't that deuterium or liquid hydrogen is the most abundant fuel in the world?

Question

Why is it that the rich countries are not investing in the production of this essential fuel energy

Answer 1

hydrogen or liquid hydrogen isn't found on earth naturally all by itself. because it has one valence electron it bonds with other atoms very quickly and that bond is very strong. it takes alot of energy to break that bond.

Answer 2

deuterium is a form of hydrogen that currently seems most suitable for reaching "break even" in a human controlled fusion reaction. This hasn't happened yet. Billion$ are being spent researching it. So until that happens in a meaningful and substantial way, it's a fantasy.

Hydrogen as a fuel has several problems. The primary one being transport and storage. Until those problems are solved, this is also fantasy.

Welcome back to reality.

Answer 3

Using liquid hydrogen as a "fuel" requires a lot of energy to make the liquid hydrogen.  It's not really a fuel it's a way of running vehicles with energy from nuclear, solar, and wind power.

Fusing deuterium to make energy is far more difficult.  Many smart people have been trying to make a machine to do that for many years.  There's been progress but we're still far away from a working plant.

Liquid hydrogen in vehicles is coming soon, and will be an important tool to fight global warming.  Fusing deuterium is still a long way off.

Answer 4

Niether.  Hydrogen is indeed one of the most abundant chemicals on Earth, but it is not in a form that can be used as fuel.  Most of the worlds hydrogen is tied up in water and for this to be used as fuel the water must be refined to produce pure hydrogen.  This requires considerable energy as well as substancial capital investment.

Answer 5

I work with liquid hydrogen. It is used in some of our processes at my company. There is absolutely no naturally occurring hydrogen, liqiuid or gas, on Earth. It is manufactured by stripping the carbon out of natural gas and then compressed and refrigerated to about -250C or -425F. It must be stored in special vacuum insulated containers called cryostats and handled with extreme care by qualified personnel because it is extremely flammable. Because all most all hydrogen used today is manufactured from natural gas it is basically a refined form of fossil fuel. It can be made electrolytically from water using a large amount of electricity to do so, but that is a very inefficient process and is not cost effective as a way to make fuel. It is unlikely to ever be a cost effective process when compared to storing electricity in ordinary batteries. For these reasons hydrogen, in spite of the hype is not a practical energy carrier with current technology.

Deuterium is not especially abundant and while it can be used to drive a fission reactor in theory. However fusing deuterium is much more difficult than other possible fusion reactions involving a combination of tritium and deuterium. It is also worth noting that we have been trying to developer fission electrical generators for 60 years now and so far have not achieved success.

Actually our most abundant fuel in the world is sun light, which every day bathes the world in more than a year's worth of total human global energy consumption.