Thermal convection in liquid metal batteries


Thermal convection in liquid metal batteries

Personnettaz, P.; Weber, N.; Koellner, T.; Nimtz, M.; Weier, T.

Liquid Metal Batteries ( LMBs ) are a promising electrochemical energy storage technology, built as a stable density stratification of two liquid metals separated by a molten salt. In this work, we focus our attention on thermal convection that appear inside Li||Bi LMBs. The chemistry of the cell is first presented. Then all possible thermal phenomena are discussed, with a continuum mechanics approach. The temperature profile is first defined in the hypothesis of pure conduction. Moreover, in order to take into account thermal convection inside the cell, the multiphase solver multiphaseInterFOAM is extended. The results of this solver are compared to the one of a pseudo-spectral code. Finally the first result of thermal convection in Li||Bi LMB is presented. The future work on transport phenomena in LMBs is also briefly summarized.

Keywords: thermal convection; transport phenomena; liquid metal battery; numerical model; OpenFOAM

  • Lecture (Conference)
    openFuelCell workshop, 24.10.2017, Jülich, Deutschland

Permalink: https://www.hzdr.de/publications/Publ-26218
Publ.-Id: 26218