A comparative assessment of the battery liquid‐cooling system employing two coolants: Phase change material emulsion and water. (23rd December 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Yang, Naixing; Wang, Juan; Xu, Shiwei; Zheng, Jianxiao; Wang, Liangliang; Yu, Juan
• Is Part Of: International journal of energy research. Volume 46:Number 5(2022)
• Page Start: 6498
• Page End: 6516
• Publication Date: 2021-12-23
• Subjects: liquid‐cooling system -- lithium‐ion battery pack -- phase change material emulsion -- start‐stop control -- thermal model; Power resources -- Periodicals; Power (Mechanics) -- Periodicals; Power resources -- Research -- Periodicals; 621.042
• DOI: 10.1002/er.7587
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0363-907X

Abstract

Summary: This work proposes a novel liquid‐cooling system that employs the phase change material (PCM) emulsion as the coolant for the battery pack. To compare the proposed scheme with the traditional water cooling system, a thermal model is developed for the battery pack with cooling systems, where the system start‐stop control and time hysteresis phenomenon are considered in simulations. The results show that either increasing the inlet velocity or temperature improves the battery temperature uniformity for the two schemes, but it enlarges the pumping energy consumption during the whole discharging process. Compared with the water cooling system, the proposed PCM emulsion cooling scheme can not only significantly decrease the battery temperature difference but also effectively shorten the system operating time. According to the calculation, the pumping energy consumption with using the PCM emulsions as the coolant decreases 18.9% in minimum and 66.6% in maximum than that with using the water as the coolant. Consequently, the proposed PCM emulsion cooling system is superior to the water cooling system in terms of the heat dissipation capacity, the temperature uniformity, the pump power requirement, and the pumping energy consumption, which is well‐suited for the cooling system of the battery pack in electric vehicles. In addition, the proposed thermal model can be used well to simulate the thermal characteristics of the vehicle‐mounted battery liquid‐cooling system under actual operating conditions.