News Archive

Energy Storage Systems: 100 Times Better Heat Transfer Thanks to the Use of Liquid Metal

The World’s First High-temperature Heat Storage System Based on Liquid-metal Technology Has the Potential to Defossilize Industry.

For more information, click on “Energy Storage: Hope in Hot Temperatures” on the homepage of KIT 

Further information on the KArlsruhe Liquid Metal LAboratory, (KALLA)

The article "Numerical and experimental analysis of magneto-convective flows around pipes" was published in the journal Fusion Engineering and Design.
Details: Liquid metals play an important role as breeding material and coolant for applications in future fusion power plants. The article examines the influence of thermoelectric effects on measurements of the electrical potential distribution in magneto-convective flows.

In the International Journal of Multiphase Flow the article "Subcooled forced convection boiling flow measured using high-resolution techniques at the COSMOS-L facility and accompanying CFD simulation employing an interface-tracking scheme" by F. Kaiser; Y. Sato and St. Gabriel was published.

At the DVGW event on 12 and 13 March, DVGW Kongress GmbH: Wasser, which will deal intensively with the topic of "Resilience and security of supply in the public water supply", Dr. S. S. Ottenburger (Head of the RESIS department) will give a presentation entitled "More resilience through the use of digital twins". Against the background of emerging challenges and new risks for the water supply in an era of transformation and climate change, the key role of digital twins will be explained: A targeted use of digital twins makes it possible to identify sustainable measures to increase the resilience of water supply systems.

We mourn the loss of our colleague and friend, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Robert Stieglitz, who passed away unexpectedly. The Institute of Thermal Energy Technology and Safety (ITES) can look back on a long journey together with Robert Stieglitz, which began back in January 1991 when he joined the Institute, then still called the "Institute of Applied Thermo- and Fluid Dynamics", where he completed his doctorate in 1994 with a thesis on "Magnetohydrodynamic flows in single- and multi-channel deflections". Robert was a thoroughly creative engineer and passionate scientist. He had pursued his path with diligence, dedication and unwavering determination.

The EU project RISEnergy (Research Infrastructure Services for Renewable Energy) starts on 1 March 2024. As part of the project, 84 renewable energy technology infrastructures will be available for use by European and non-European researchers.  These include the Karlsruhe Liquid Metal Laboratory, which is researching on high-temperature heat storage systems.

The article "Geometric optimization of electrically coupled liquid metal manifolds for WCLL blankets" by Leo Bühler and Chiara Mistrangelo was published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science.

Details: Liquid metals play an important role as breeding material and coolant for applications in future fusion power plants. In the article, electrically coupled magnetohydrodynamic flows in the manifolds of a water-cooled test blanket for ITER are investigated and their geometry is optimized so that all breeder units are uniformly flowed through.

The article "MHD flows in curved pipes under a non-uniform magnetic field" by Chiara Mistrangelo and Leo Bühler was published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science.

Detail: Liquid metals play an important role as breeding material and coolant for applications in future fusion power plants. The article investigates flows of liquid metals in double elbows, such as those planned in the shield block behind the water-cooled test blanket in ITER. Remarkable are high velocities in thin internal shear layers around a slow flow core.

The article "Liquid metal MHD research at KIT: Fundamental phenomena and flows in complex blanket geometries" was published in the journal Fusion Engineering and Design.

Detail: Liquid metals play an important role as breeding material and coolant for applications in future fusion power plants. The article gives an overview of a broad spectrum of magnetohydrodynamic investigations at ITES in the field of fundamental research and for applications in the relevant parameter range in fusion blankets.

When storing heat with liquid metals at temperatures above 600 °C, one of the challenges is to develop compatible materials and components. We are therefore currently setting up a new test bench for testing components in high-temperature liquid metal. This work is part of the BMWK-funded LIMELISA project in collaboration with DLR and KSB. The paper summarizes the design of this circuit.

The RESIS department held a transfer workshop titled "Resilience & Sustainability - AI-based Early Warning Systems for Dam Safety" at Tbilisi State University in Georgia from September 25-27.

This event focused on the presentation of an early warning system demonstrator based on a deeper understanding of the complex interactions between water levels, meteorological data and seismicity. This system enables robust predictions regarding the deformation of dams. Significant results were achieved within the framework of the DAMAST project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

Against the background of the increasing occurrence of extreme precipitation events and the growing importance of dams, this innovative approach provides a solid basis for research and the development of pioneering early warning systems.

Klarissa Niedermeier, Franziska Müller-Trefzer and Thomas Wetzel won the „best poster award“ at the Heat Powered Cycles Conference 2023, 3.-6. September 2023, in Edinburgh, on their work on “Liquid Metals as Heat Transfer Fluids for High-Temperature Heat Storage”.

The H2 department will give the following 3 presentations at the "International Conference on Hydrogen Safety" in Québec in September:

- Experimental investigation of hydrogen-air flame propagation in fire extinguishing foam
- Liquid hydogen evaporation above four different substrates
- Modelling the non-adiabatic blowdown of pressurised cryogenic hydrogen storage tank

The head of the H2 department is Prof. Dr.-Ing. Thomas Jordan.

More information can be found on the department page.

At the IHK- Workshop "From research to practice: process heat and sector coupling for companies" (2023) at the Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology (ICT) in Pfinztal on June 22, 2023, Dr. Dietmar Kuhn /ITES and Dr. Joachim Fuchs /INR gave the presentation "Utilization of waste heat in industry" to an interested audience.

The urban supply of goods and energy in the future

Ralf Caspary talks to Dr. Sadeeb Simon Ottenburger in Science Talk. He heads the "Resilient and Smart Infrastructure Systems" department at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

How can critical infrastructures be made sustainable and resilient? Dr. Sadeeb Simon Ottenburger is researching how potential threats can be averted.

Whether for the supply of electricity or food, consumers rely on secure infrastructures to provide them with goods and services. In this context, increasing digitization enables flexible control of supply systems. However, it also increases the vulnerability to disruptions and attacks.

Journal article

The article "Magneto-convective flows around two differentially heated cylinders" by Chiara Mistrangelo, Leo Bühler, Cyril Courtessole, Viktor Klüber and Christina Köhly was published In the journal Heat and Mass Transfer.

Detail: Numerical simulations are used to investigate the liquid metal heat transfer around heated and cooled pipes under the influence of strong magnetic fields. The simulations support an experimental campaign carried out at the MEKKA laboratory of KIT.

The article "Towards the simulation of magnetohydrodynamic flow in an entire water-cooled test blanket module mock-up" by Chiara Mistrangelo, Leo Bühler, Viktor Klüber and Christina Köhly was published in the journal Fusion Engineering and Design.

Detail: As part of the research work in EUROfusion on breeder blankets for future fusion reactors, a water-cooled lead-lithium blanket is being considered as a reference design to be tested in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor ITER and used in a DEMO reactor. The aim is to numerically simulate the liquid metal flow in a complex complete blanket geometry with all hatching units and flow distributors.

The article "Design of a scaled mockup of the water-cooled test blanket module for magnetohydrodynamic experiments in liquid metal manifolds and breeder units" by Christina Köhly, Leo Bühler and Cyril Courtessole was published in the journal Fusion Engineering and Design.

Detail: The article presents the design of a scaled model experiment to study magnetohydrodynamic liquid metal flows in a test blanket module for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor ITER at the MEKKA laboratory of KIT. The planned experiments will contribute to a better understanding of the flow behavior and to the optimization of the blanket design for ITER.

Thermal stratification can lead to the failure of safety-relevant components in nuclear reactors under critical conditions. An efficient POD-ROM code should provide predictions of the liquid metal flow in the complex reactor geometry. In the article "Simulation of stratification phenomena with a spectral Fourier-Chebyshev method on the background of a lead-cooled fast reactor" in the journal Annals of Nuclear Energy, a self-developed spectral code was presented with which the faster POD-ROM code can be calibrated. Its efficiency and high accuracy were verified using the example of Rayleigh-Bénard convection.
Daxiao Liu, Philipp Marthaler, Andreas Class, Andreas and Long Gu

Three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic phenomena in circular tube flows

The calculation of liquid metal flows in magnetic fields for applications in fusion technology requires special numerical procedures and discretization methods in order to achieve accurate results even with the strongest magnetic fields. The models developed as part of the dissertation are used on high-performance computers and provide insights into phenomena that would otherwise not be accessible using analytical or experimental methods. We congratulate Mr. Klüber on passing his doctoral examination at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at KIT.

As part of the "33rd (Virtual) Meeting of the German CFD Network of Competence" from March 22-23, 2022 in Garching, the lecture: "Combustion experiments with homogeneous and gradient H2-CO-air mixtures in semi-closed geometries" was given by A. Friedrich, G. Necker, M. Moore, J. Grune, M. Kuznetsov and T. Jordan by Mr. Andreas Friedrich via Internet. The work was carried out at ITES via the project management organization GRS with funding from the BMWi.

Klarissa Niedermeier, Martin Lux, Markus Daubner, Franziska Müller-Trefzer and Thomas Wetzel from the "KALLA" department received a "Poster communication award" for the presentation of a poster entitled "A test rig for component testing for high-temperature thermal energy storage with liquid metals" at the Eurotherm Seminar "Innovative solutions for thermal energy storage deployment", in Lleida, Spain, from 24.05.2023 - 26.05.2023.
At KALLA we investigate liquid metals as heat transfer media for heat storage.

Lorenz Weber, Stephan Gabriel and Andreas Class from the department "Framatome Professional School" published their article "On the statistical evaluation of bubbly flows using Voronoi cells grouped in clusters with fixed cell count" in the journal Physics of Fluids.

Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have been supporting the Ukrainian authorities in the field of nuclear safety for over a year now. The team led by Sadeeb Simon Ottenburger provides decision support in the event of damage to one of the four nuclear power plants in the war-torn country.