A novel composite vapor chamber for battery thermal management system

Abstract

With the worsening problem of environmental pollution, the electric vehicles are becoming relevant more than ever before. The battery thermal management system (BTMS) is the key to ensure safety of the electric vehicles (EV). A novel composite vapor chamber (NCVC) is proposed in this paper which can cool and preheat the battery pack. The NCVC consists of a vapor chamber and five heat pipes, which not only has good thermal conductivity, but also has excellent temperature uniformity. The heat transfer resistance of the NCVC is analyzed in this study, while the cooling and preheating performance is experimentally verified. The results of the cooling performance test show that the NCVC can be started in about 240 s, and the minimum thermal resistance is 0.0355 °C/W. The preheating performance experiment shows that the NCVC can raise the battery cell temperature to 20 °C in about 275 s. In this paper, the thermodynamic simulation of the battery pack with the NCVC is also carried out. The simulation results of the two scenarios show that the NCVC can operate normally under a certain range of temperature. The NCVC proposed in this paper can provide a new solution for the BTMS.