重力扰动下液态金属电池内部的多场耦合特性分析

Liquid metal battery (LMB) has become a possible solution for grid scale energy storage applications due to its low cost, long life and great performance. However, there are a variety of instabilities during operation. External disturbances, such as sloshing, would further aggravate the influence of the instabilities, even lead to short circuit of the batteries. In this paper, a 2-D axisymmetric model of a 200 Ah Li||Bi LMB was developed to investigate the impact of sloshing on electrochemical performance of the large capacity LMBs. The model considered the electrochemical reactions, fluid dynamics, heat and mass transfer process in the LMBs to simulate the thermal induced flow and the magnetic induced flow. It was validated by experimental voltage data at different discharge ratios. Under gravity disturbance, influence of the induced flows to the mass transfer and discharge performance was studied, and the short-circuit risk of the LMBs with different electrolyte thickness was presented. The results showed that the LMB was robust to the gravity disturbance to some extent. However, when the electrolyte thickness was small, there was a large risk of short circuit.