Enhancement of thermal management for cylindrical battery module based on a novel wrench-shaped design for the cold plate

Abstract

Battery modules with uniform cold plate designs suffer from the temperature non-uniformity issue caused by increased coolant temperature. To break the monotonically increasing trend of battery temperature along the flow direction, a novel wrench-shaped design is developed in this study for the cold plate applied in cylindrical battery modules. Superiority of the wrench-shaped cold plate is examined from the perspectives of temperature rise control, temperature uniformity maintenance, lightweight extent and auxiliary power consumption. Corresponding mechanism analyses reveal that the different cold plate designs in the upstream and downstream segments have changed the temperature distribution feature in the battery module. The monotonically increasing trend of the battery temperature could be effectively broken when the cooling ability of the cold plate at the junction between the upstream and downstream segments is specially enhanced. Thus, the superior heat dissipation performance of the wrench-shaped cold plate is attributed to its bifurcation structure at the junction which demonstrates satisfactorily enhanced heat dissipation effect. Extended study is also performed to identify optimal position for the bifurcation, which is located at battery 4 based on the balance between the thermal behaviors of upstream and downstream segments.