Contact

Dr. Tom Weier

Head Liquid metal battery
Process Diagnostics
t.weierAthzdr.de
Phone: +49 351 260 2226

Collection of thermophysical properties for liquid metals and molten salts salts

Foto: liquid metal battery casing at operating temperature ©Copyright: Dr. Martins Sarma

Liquid metal battery casing at operating temperature (600 °C).

Source: Dr. Sarma, Martins

Knowledge of materials properties is a necessary prerequisite for a great number of scientific and engineering tasks, such as designing apparatuses, estimating heat fluxes, ohmic losses and other quantities and is indispensable for many numerical simulations, e.g., in computational fluid dynamics. We concentrate here on liquid metals and fused salts mainly for their application in electrochemical energy storage, i.e., in liquid metal and molten salt batteries. The thermophysical properties database "Yamdb" was written to offer rapid and easy access to a number of material properties in the liquid state at standard pressure. Typically, the substances useful in the field of liquid metal batteries possess melting temperatures significantly above room temperature.

The scarcity of data on the thermophysical properties of liquid metals compared to, e.g., hydrocarbons is due to the experimental difficulties in obtaining accurate measurements at high temperatures. The same holds true for fused salts. Nevertheless, a large amount of data is available in the literature in dedicated collections and distributed across a large number of individual publications. Yamdb shall enable easy access to a subset of these thermophysical properties.

Publications

  • Weier, T.; Nash, W.; Personnettaz, P.; Weber, N.
    Yamdb: easily accessible thermophysical properties of liquid metals and molten salts
    arXiv::2402.10922
  • Duczek, C.; Horstmann, G. M.; Ding, W.; Einarsrud, K. E.; Gelfgat, A. Y.; Godinez-Brizuela, O. E.; Kjos, O. S.; Landgraf, S.; Lappan, T.; Monrrabal, G.; Nash, W.; Personnettaz, P.; Sarma, M.; Sommerseth, C.; Trtik, P.; Weber, N.; Weier, T.
    Fluid mechanics of Na-Zn liquid metal batteries
    Applied Physics Reviews 11(2024), 041326
  • Weber, N.; Duczek, C.; Monrrabal, G.; Nash, W.; Sarma, M.; Weier, T.
    Risk assessment for Na-Zn liquid metal batteries
    Open Research Europe 4(2024) 236
  • Nash, W.; Sarma, M., Lappan, T.; Trtik, P.; Solem, C. K. W.; Wang, Z.; Duczek, C.; Beltrán, A.; Weber, N.; Weier, T.
    Diaphragm performance of high-temperature Na–Zn cells evaluated by neutron imaging
    J. Energy Storage 114, Part A (2025), 115542

Software