Thermal Management System for Lithium-Ion Batteries Using Phase Change Material, Heat Pipes and Fins

Abstract This work presents a comparative study on different cooling strategies for an 18650 lithium-ion battery both experimentally and numerically. Passive and hybrid cooling techniques that consist of heat pipes (HPs) and fins integrated with a phase change material (PCM) are investigated. The experimental setup consists of a vertically oriented cylindrical enclosure with an inner and outer housing. The annulus space between the inner and outer housings are occupied with a PCM, Fin-PCM, and HP-Fin-PCM and are enumerated as PCM-only, Fin-PCM, and HP-Fin-PCM configurations, respectively. A cartridge heater is inserted inside the inner housing concentrically to generate a pseudo battery, which mimics the heat generated by the battery. An air flow channel is designed for HP-Fin-PCM configuration. Temperatures at various locations of the setups are measured and compared for different heater powers. It is concluded that the HP-Fin-PCM configuration is the most effective in reducing the battery surface temperature, followed by the Fin-PCM, and the PCM-only configuration. A transient three-dimensional numerical model using ANSYS-FLUENT software is also developed and used to provide details into the physics of the problem, and to enable optimization studies. The phase change in the conjugate numerical model is accounted for by the enthalpy-porosity technique. The computational results reasonably agreed with the experimental data.