Efficient Design of Battery Thermal Management Systems for Improving Cooling Performance and Reducing Pressure Drop

Kai Chen, Ligong Yang, Yiming Chen, Bingheng Wu () and Mengxuan Song ()
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Kai Chen: Key Laboratory of Enhanced Heat Transfer and Energy Conservation of the Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, China
Ligong Yang: Key Laboratory of Enhanced Heat Transfer and Energy Conservation of the Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, China
Yiming Chen: Key Laboratory of Enhanced Heat Transfer and Energy Conservation of the Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, China
Bingheng Wu: School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Guangzhou Railway Polytechnic, Guangzhou 511300, China
Mengxuan Song: Shanghai Key Laboratory of Engineering Materials Application and Evaluation, School of Energy and Materials, Shanghai Polytechnic University, Shanghai 201209, China

Energies, 2024, vol. 17, issue 10, 1-14

Abstract: The air-cooled system is one of the most widely used battery thermal management systems (BTMSs) for the safety of electric vehicles. In this study, an efficient design of air-cooled BTMSs is proposed for improving cooling performance and reducing pressure drop. Combining with a numerical calculation method, a strategy with a varied step length of adjustments (∆ d ) is developed to optimize the spacing distribution among battery cells for temperature uniformity improvement. The optimization results indicate that the developed strategy reduces the optimization time by about 50% compared with a strategy using identical ∆ d values while maintaining good performance of the optimized system. Furthermore, the system’s pressure drop does not increase after the spacing optimization. Based on this characteristic, a structural design strategy is proposed to improve the cooling performance and reduce the pressure drop simultaneously. First, the appropriate flow pattern is arranged and the secondary outlet is added to reduce the pressure drop of the system. The results show that the BTMS with U-type flow combined with a secondary outlet against the original outlet can effectively reduce the pressure drop of the system. Subsequently, this BTMS is further improved using the developed cell spacing optimization strategy with varied ∆ d values while the pressure drop is fixed. It is found that the final optimized BTMS achieves a battery temperature difference below 1 K for different inlet airflow rates, with the pressure drop being reduced by at least 45% compared with the BTMS before the optimization.

Keywords: battery thermal management; air cooling; cell spacing; secondary outlet; pressure drop reduction (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: 2024
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