MHD of liquid metal batteries

Liquid metal batteries (LMBs), developed originally during the 1960s in the United States, experienced a renaissance some ten years ago at MIT. Built as stable density stratification of two liquid metals, which are separated by a molten salt, they offer potentially very cheap stationary energy storage. Thus, LMBs may be the key enabler for a large scale deployment of highly fluctuating renewable energy sources. Especially their potentially long life time, the extremely high current densities and the cheap active materials make the cells an ideal candidate for stationary energy storage.
Fluid flows will naturally appear in the fully liquid cells. On the one hand, convection can be beneficial when enhancing mass transfer and improving the cell efficiency. On the other hand, strong flow must be avoided to ensure a safe operation.
The talk will give an introduction to the set-up and working principle of LMBs. The second part will be devoted to fluid dynamic
instabilities in the cells; both numerical and experimental results will be presented. The talk will focus on long wave MHD interface instabilities (as known from aluminium reduction cells), on thermal convection, and electro-vortex flow.