Design of composite liquid and phase change material cooling system for high rate lithium-ion battery modules

An efficient battery thermal management system is essential. In this paper, we propose a composite liquid and phase change material(PCM) cooling structure to solve the heat dissipation problem of lithium-ion batteries(LIBs) under high rate charging and discharging conditions. We study the influence of each factor of the cold plate on the heat dissipation performance for LIBs under 10C discharge using the single-factor analysis and orthogonal experiments. The results indicate that the heat dissipation performance is optimal when the coolant flow rate is 0.8 m/s, the fin angle is 60°, the longitudinal spacing of the fins is 15 mm, and the transverse spacing is 8 mm. The heat dissipation performance of composite cold plate is best when the phase change temperature is 35 °C and the thickness of PCM is 3 mm. After experimental test, the cooling system can control the maximum temperature(T_max) of the battery module below 39.8 °C. The maximum temperature difference(ΔT_max) of the battery is controlled within 1.6 °C. Battery energy consumption reduced by 10.7 %. In summary, composite liquid and phase change material cooling structure provides an effective solution with high heat dissipation efficiency and low power consumption for power-type lithium-ion battery modules.