Comparison of cooling plate configurations for automotive battery pack thermal management

Abstract

A numerical simulation was developed combining micro and macro scale models, to determine the thermal state of battery packs in electric vehicles. A spatially resolved Ohm’s law model was integrated with the single particle model to resolve the electrochemistry in prismatic cells, and then coupled with a thermal transport simulation. The objective was to compare the effectiveness of two types of liquid channel cooling plate configurations. The first, known as ice plates are placed between every second cell in the battery pack. The second, known as cold plates, are placed underneath a block of cells, and absorb heat only through the small lower face of the cell, exploiting anisotropic heat transfer properties. In general, the ice plate performs better. The cold plate is less complicated and expensive to integrate into the battery pack, and has more scope for higher coolant circulation rates. This paper compares the performance of the two cooling systems, highlighting the conditions where each system works best, along with quantitative assessments obtained through numerical simulation.