A novel energy harvesting and battery thermal management in hybrid vehicles using a thermally regenerative electrochemical device

Abstract

The orientation these days is on using high-efficiency devices such as hybrid vehicles. The current study uses a thermally regenerative electrochemical cycle (TREC) for energy harvesting from vehicle exhaust. Also, the TREC is utilized in reverse mode as a thermally regenerative electrochemical refrigerator (TRER) for cooling the battery in hybrid vehicles when the engine is turned off. To study the performance of the proposed system, an analytical model is developed and validated. The effect of different parameters on the TREC's performance, such as fuel mass flow rate, water temperature, mass flow rate, ambient temperature, and the Nusselt number, is investigated. Using the TREC for harvesting the wasted energy from the engine achieved an efficiency of 4.63%. The TRER has a variation in the peak COP from 7.84 to 1.89 based on the cold and hot reservoir temperatures. Under optimum operating conditions, using the TRER can reduce the battery's temperature from 293 K to 287.2 K after 1000 s of operation. Using the TREC and TRER devices provides a valuable solution to improve overall efficiency and protect hybrid vehicles' batteries.