Metal pad roll instability in liquid metal batteries

Considering the increasing deployment of renewable energies, large-scale stationary energy storage will be a key-technology for the future. One potentially ideal grid-scale energy storage system is the liquid metal battery (LMB), consisting of a totally liquid interior. The long life time and abundant raw materials of LMBs offer a very cheap way of building batteries.

Building LMBs cheap means to make them large. Strong currents in the order of kA will drive a fluid flow, which may increase the battery's performance, or lead to a short circuit in the worst case.

A numerial model for describing the MHD fluid flow is presented and used to describe the Tayler instability, electro-vortex flow and interface instabilities in LMBs.