Thermal management of electronic devices and systems

Physics

Engineering

Phase change

Power (physics)

Materials science

Thermal

Phase-change material

Nano-

Environmental science

Chemical engineering

Battery (electricity)

Engineering physics

Mechanical engineering

Thermodynamics

Energy

The production of alternative clean energy vehicles provides a sustainable solution to the transportation sector. An efficient battery cooling system is necessary for safer usage of electric cars during their life cycle. The current work presents a novel modified battery module configuration employing two-layer nanoparticle enhanced phase change materials (nePCM). The design suggests m × n × p arrangement where m denotes the number of Li-ion 18,650 cells, n and p refer to the number of primary containers (filled with nePCM1) and secondary containers (filled with nePCM2). Each Li-ion cell was allowed to discharge at 3C condition for two different configurations: 7 × 7 × 1 and 7 × 1 × 1. The study involves a cooling performance comparison of proposed battery thermal management systems (BTMS) at an ambient temperature ranging from 30 °C to 40 °C with external natural convection conditions. The transient development of heat in batteries and the melting behavior of nePCMs shows better cooling performance for the 7 × 7 × 1 case. BTMS based on 7 × 7 × 1 configuration maintains the cell temperature below 46 °C with combined nePCM and external natural convection cooling even at the hot ambient temperature of 40 °C.

A novel battery thermal management system using nano-enhanced phase change materials