Thermal Performance of a Cylindrical Lithium-Ion Battery Module Cooled by Two-Phase Refrigerant Circulation

Bichao Lin, Jiwen Cen and Fangming Jiang
Additional contact information
Bichao Lin: Laboratory of Advanced Energy Systems, Guangzhou Institute of Energy Conversion, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510640, China
Jiwen Cen: Laboratory of Advanced Energy Systems, Guangzhou Institute of Energy Conversion, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510640, China
Fangming Jiang: Laboratory of Advanced Energy Systems, Guangzhou Institute of Energy Conversion, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510640, China

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 23, 1-12

Abstract: It is important for the safety and good performance of a Li-ion battery module/pack to have an efficient thermal management system. In this paper, a battery thermal management system with a two-phase refrigerant circulated by a pump was developed. A battery module consisting of 240 18650-type Li-ion batteries was fabricated based on a finned-tube heat-exchanger structure. This structural design offers the potential to reduce the weight of the battery thermal management system. The cooling performance of the battery module was experimentally studied under different charge/discharge C-rates and with different refrigerant circulation pump operation frequencies. The results demonstrated the effectiveness of the cooling system. It was found that the refrigerant-based battery thermal management system could maintain the battery module maximum temperature under 38 °C and the temperature non-uniformity within 2.5 °C for the various operation conditions considered. The experimental results with 0.5 C charging and a US06 drive cycle showed that the thermal management system could reduce the maximum temperature difference in the battery module from an initial value of 4.5 °C to 2.6 °C, and from the initial 1.3 °C to 1.1 °C, respectively. In addition, the variable pump frequency mode was found to be effective at controlling the battery module, functioning at a desirable constant temperature and at the same time minimizing the pump work consumption.

Keywords: battery thermal management; lithium-ion battery safety; refrigerant circulation cooling; electric vehicles (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/23/8094/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/23/8094/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:14:y:2021:i:23:p:8094-:d:694287

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().