Fluid mechanics of Na-Zn liquid metal batteries
Carolina Duczek, Gerrit Maik Horstmann, Wenjin Ding, Kristian Etienne Einarsrud, Alexander Gelfgat, Omar E. Godinez‐Brizuela, Ole S. Kjos, S. Landgraf, Tobias Lappan, Gleidys Monrrabal, William Nash, Paolo Personnettaz, Mārtiņš Sarma, Camilla Sommerseth, Pavel Trtik, Norbert Weber, Tom Weier
Abstract
Liquid metal batteries have been introduced as promising option to address the needs for new energy storage technologies. Currently, batteries based on sodium and zinc are under development and a favorable option due to their high theoretical cell potential, readily abundant materials, and cost-advantages. Nevertheless, they face the problem of self-discharge, which makes it inevitable to understand fluid dynamics in the whole cell. Motivated by that, several types of fluid mechanic instabilities in Na-Zn liquid metal batteries are identified and discussed here. On the one hand they can jeopardize secure operation, but on the other hand they can also improve mixing and increase the cell efficiency. In doing so, realistic cell as well as operation parameters are included and dimensionless numbers for identifying critical conditions are presented. The phenomena with highest significance for the discussed batteries are solutal convection, swirling flow, electrocapillary Marangoni convection, and droplet formation. Still, many open research questions remain and we aim at motivating researchers to dig deeper into some of these topics to contribute to an improved cell design and performance.