Experimental study of thermal management system for cylindrical Li-ion battery pack based on nanofluid cooling and copper sheath

A novel thermal management system including wavy/stair channel liquid cooling and copper sheath is developed and studied experimentally in this investigation to control the temperature of cylindrical lithium-ion batteries. The influences of different variables on cooling performance during charge/discharge operations are investigated: C-rate, alumina nanoparticle concentration, inflow velocity, and stair channel geometry. The experiments are conducted with two volume fractions of 1% and 2%. With increasing the concentration of alumina nanoparticles in the deionized water, the maximum temperature and temperature difference reduced remarkably. Also, the non-uniformity of the temperature is reduced, while an increase in the inflow velocity results in reducing the peak temperature and temperature non-uniformity. Additionally, to control the cooling capacity and temperature distribution inside a battery pack, a new method-liquid cooling lithium-ion battery thermal management system-is developed based on the stair channel cooling. The stair channel reduced the maximum temperature and temperature non-uniformity of the battery pack under 5C discharge process compared to the straight channel by about 3.59 K and 0.65 K, respectively. The results show that these approaches can reduce the maximum temperature and temperature non-uniformity of the battery pack under 5C discharge/charge operations to values lower than 305.13 K and 2.01 K, respectively.

Automated summary

A novel thermal management system was developed and studied experimentally to control the temperature of cylindrical lithium-ion batteries. The study found that increasing the concentration of alumina nanoparticles and inflow velocity can significantly reduce the maximum temperature and temperature non-uniformity, while liquid cooling with stair channel can effectively reduce the temperature of the battery pack.