On-Site Sodium Production with Seawater Electrolysis as Alternative Energy for Oil by Offshore Wind Power Generation

Abstract

The "Offshore Electrolysis Plant" has been proposed to prevent a fuel crisis and global warming simultaneously and to make a peace loving, sustainable society without resource wars. This on-site electrolysis plant is located on the raw material called "seawater" and is equipped with a windpower station. Utilizing offshore wind energy and seawater, sodium is produced as a solid fuel on site by molten-salt electrolysis and transported to a power consumption place on land, where the sodium will be made to react with water to produce hydrogen for power generation. Many by-products such as fresh water, magnesium, hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, and sodium hydroxide are prepared electrolytically; the sodium hydroxide is supplied to the soda industry as a raw material. Furthermore, the plant is designed to use all the by-products efficiently, to attain "Zero Waste", to decrease the energy loss in production, storage, and transportation, and to improve the efficiency of the whole system.