Thermofluidic analysis and optimization of installation spacing in a multiserpentine channeled cold plate for the liquid cooling of pouch-type battery cells

Abstract

Thermally managing lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are critical factor for ensuring the reliable operation of electric vehicles. The inherent narrow operating temperature range (e.g., from 25 °C to 40 °C) necessitates a dedicated thermal management system for desired and designed LIB performance. Due to the increasing specific energy density of the LIB packs especially for higher discharging loads, the LIBs have been thermally managed by various liquid convection systems. Among these, the most popular design is perhaps with coolant of forced convection in multichanneled cold plates that are inserted between LIBs. The most distinct disadvantage is the easy thermal saturation of the coolant along its paths, leading to fast degradation of cooling effectiveness. To overcome this, the thermal resistance model in the present work is used to optimize the configuration of a multiple serpentine channeled cold plate with equi-spacing. Consequently, we propose a new cold plate design that employs equi-width channels with unequi-spacing, providing more uniform temperature distribution on cold plate surfaces by decreasing 13% of the thermal standard deviation from 6.3 °C to 5.5 °C and 8% maximum local temperature difference from 26.3 °C to 24.1 °C, however, only 1% pressure drop higher.

Keywords:

• Battery thermal management systems
• cold plate
• liquid convection
• optimization

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning (KETEP) grants funded by the Korea Government (Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy; Grant No. No. 2020890100010), and also supported by supported by National Research Foundation (NRF, 2016R1D1A3 B01015543).