Ships and how to run them

Here is my method for generating power for the next generation of large ships.

Ships, most of them anyway, sail upon the oceans. Oceans are full of Sodium Chloride. I would pump sea water into a reactor that would use Electrolysis of the sea water to produce sodium hydroxide by the following:

Anode reaction:

2Cl– --- Cl2 + 2e–

Cathode reactions:

2Na+ + 2e- --- 2Na

2Na + 2H2O --- 2Na+ + 2OH– + H2

This would require a DC current from onboard batteries.

Then the sodium would be passed into another reactor where a DC current would be passed through molten Sodium Hydroxide to produce Sodium Na.

Then it is stored in tanks for use as fuel.

The ships engine would be a steam engine who’s heat comes from the mixing of the sodium with water.

“Owing to its high reactivity, sodium is found in nature only as a compound and never as the free element. Sodium reacts exothermically with water: small pea-sized pieces will bounce around the surface of the water until they are consumed by it, whereas large pieces will explode. While sodium reacts with water at room temperature the sodium piece melts with the heat of the reaction to form a sphere, if the reacting sodium piece is large enough. The reaction with water produces very caustic sodium hydroxide and highly flammable hydrogen gas.”

The excess sodium hydroxide would be fed back into the 2nd reactor to make more Sodium while the Hydrogen would be burned or heat and its by product would be water vapor and that would be sent back into the ocean totally clean.

There is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine. So the ship would have to start with a fair amount of charged batteries but once the system gets going it should be efficient. Maybe…?