MHD of Large Scale Liquid Metal Batteries

• Published in: Light Metals 2017 pp. 687 - 692
• Main Authors: Bojarevics, Valdis, Tucs, Andrejs
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Springer International Publishing AG 2017; Springer International Publishing
• Series: The Minerals, Metals & Materials Series
• Subjects: Interface instability; Liquid metal batteries; Materials science; Metals technology / metallurgy; MHD mixing; Testing of materials
• ISBN: 9783319515403; 3319515403
• ISSN: 2367-1181; 2367-1696
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-51541-0_84

Liquid metal batteriesLiquid metal batteries (LMB) are candidates for large-scale energy storage in a national energy grid. The attraction of the liquid batteries lies in the fast kinetics at liquid metal-electrolyte interfaces, simple assembly and recycling, while the major difficulties to implementation are their sensitivity to liquid motion and operation at elevated temperatures. The concept of liquid metal battery bears a close similarity to aluminium electrolytic production cells. The two liquid layer magnetohydrodynamic effects can be projected to the three liquid layer self-segregated structure of the batteries. The trend for commercial electrolysis cells is to increase their size instead of operating a large number of parallel small ones. Our aim is to develop a numerical model for the three density-stratified electrically conductive liquid layers using 3D and shallow layer approximation accounting for specific magnetohydrodynamic effects during periods of battery charge/discharge. A possibility to reuse infrastructure of an old aluminium electrolysis potline for a large scale liquid batteries facility is discussed.