Assessment of high-temperature self-assembling battery implementation based on the aluminum smelting process

Abstract

Renewable power sources are a promising alternative to the electrical generation by conventional sources of energy, limiting the emissions to the atmosphere and reducing the dependence on coal or oil. But some of these sources (wind or sun) have one major drawback, which is their variability. Apart from that, electricity production has to match the demand at any moment, so the supply systems are built and operated to match the highest demand. Decoupling production from consumption can report great advantages and that is the main reason to develop cost-effective technologies that allow electricity to be stored on a large scale. The high-temperature self assembly battery (also known as Liquid Metal Battery) is a promising technology. This battery works at high-temperature so that all its components are in liquid form. The absence of solid-liquid interfaces enables the achievement of high currents, apart from high diffusivities and fastest kinetics. That gives the battery the power of storing huge amounts of energy. In order to evaluate the cost of these stationary storage systems, we are trying to look at similar electrolytic industrial processes, such as the Aluminum smelting processes. The Aluminum Hall-Heroult reduction cell has a configuration similar to the battery so we will base our estimation of the cost on this system. The capital investment of an Aluminum Smelter will be analyzed in detail, and based on this, an estimation for the cost of the Liquid Metal Battery will be calculated.