A novel liquid cooling plate concept for thermal management of lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles. (1st March 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Akbarzadeh, Mohsen; Jaguemont, Joris; Kalogiannis, Theodoros; Karimi, Danial; He, Jiacheng; Jin, Lu; Xie, Peng; Van Mierlo, Joeri; Berecibar, Maitane
• Is Part Of: Energy conversion and management. Volume 231(2021)
• Publication Date: 2021-03-01
• Subjects: Battery thermal management -- Liquid cooling plate -- Phase change material -- CFD analysis -- Electric vehicles; Direct energy conversion -- Periodicals; Energy storage -- Periodicals; Energy transfer -- Periodicals; Énergie -- Conversion directe -- Périodiques; Direct energy conversion; Periodicals; 621.3105
• DOI: 10.1016/j.enconman.2021.113862
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0196-8904

Abstract

Highlights: A novel liquid cooling plate embedded with PCM for battery thermal management. The cooling plate provides a modular solution for battery cooling with PCM. The cooling plate is 36% lighter than an aluminum cooling plate of the same size. Up to 30% reduction in pump energy consumption is achieved by the new cooling plate. The cooling plate provides a heating solution for batteries in cold temperatures. Abstract: In this paper, an innovative liquid cooling plate (LCP) embedded with phase change material (PCM) is designed for electric vehicle (EV) battery thermal management. The proposed cooling plate is named "hybrid cooling plate" as it takes advantage of both active (liquid) and passive (PCM) cooling methods. The hybrid LCP is 36% lighter than a volumetrically equivalent traditional aluminum LCP, and in addition to the cooling capability, it provides a heating solution to slow the temperature loss of the batteries during the cold stop. The thermal behavior of the hybrid LCP for two different scenarios including the cooling performance under a real driving cycle, and the cold stop temperature performance are investigated and compared with a traditional aluminum LCP using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model. An experimental test bench is developed to test a prototype of the hybrid LCP and verify the CFD model. The cooling performance results indicate that the use of hybrid LCP could reduce the energy consumption of the pump required for circulating the coolant up to 30% in comparison with an aluminum LCP. Moreover, the novel designed LCP improves the temperature uniformity effectively. It was also found that the hybrid LCP could significantly delay the temperature drop at the cold stop situation of the EV and therefore, reduce the energy needed for the active heating of the batteries after short-term parking. These imply that the hybrid liquid cooling plate concept could be a promising thermal management solution for EVs.