Numerical Investigations of Flow in Cuboidal Liquid Metal Battery

Liquid metal batteries (LMBs) are potentially attractive option for large-scale energy storage devices at grid scale. We present here the results of numerical simulations performed on a cuboidal LMB geometry using OpenFOAM (OF). We have developed a magnetohydrodynamic (MHD)-based multiphase flow solver ‘epotBInterFoam’ which has MHD equations coupled with the volume of fluid (VOF)-based solver in OF. We study the electro-vortex flow (EVF) in the LMB electrode that creates a jet leading to interfacial distortions at the electrode–electrolyte interface of the LMB. Such interface disruptions can create short circuits in practical LMBs. We consider six cases with each case differing in geometry or boundary conditions. We find that the interface becomes more unstable with increasing electric voltage and decreasing width of the negative current collector. A voltage as small as 0.00764 V can lead to short circuit and is sufficient to disrupt the LMB functioning and make it unsafe for use.