Recent research progress on phase change materials for thermal management of lithium-ion batteries

With the rapid consumption of traditional fossil energy and the aggravation of environmental pollution, it has become a trend for new energy to replace fossil energy as the main power source. Under this trend, lithium-ion batteries have attracted more and more attention as a new energy storage device, and it has been widely used because of its many remarkable merits. However, lithium-ion batteries are sensitive to the temperature, so the battery thermal management (BTM) is an indispensable component of commercialized lithium-ion batteries energy storage system. At present, there are mainly four kinds of BTM, including air medium, liquid medium, heat pipe and phase change material (PCM) medium. Among them, PCM based BTM is a novel passive thermal management technology, and control the temperature by means of the latent heat during the phase change of PCM, which provide the great ability and high efficiency of thermal management. Many functional fillers could improve significantly the thermal conductivity, antileakage and other properties of pure PCMs, which is more suitable for the BTM. In this paper, the advantages of PCM based BTM are analyzed, and the latest research progress is comprehensively summarized and reviewed. Furthermore, the current technical problems and future research trend of PCM based BTM are also discussed. This work can provide an important evidence and new insight into the selection of PCMs for thermal management of lithium-ion batteries.