Experimental investigation of the thermal performance of heat pipe assisted phase change material for battery thermal management system

Abstract

In this study, a serials phase change materials (PCM) based battery thermal management systems for cylindrical lithium battery module were designed, which were pure PCM, heat pipe coupled with air assisted PCM (PCM/HP-Air), heat pipe coupled with liquid assisted PCM (PCM/HP-Liquid), respectively. The PCM with large heat storage capacity and heat pipe coupled with liquid cooling exhibit excellent thermal performance for battery module, which is an effective and reliable method with relative longer working time and appropriate temperature. The results by experiments at different discharge rates indicated that heat pipe played an important role in transporting the heat promptly and balancing the temperature uniformly for PCM based battery module. What’s more, the heat pipe coupled with liquid cooling presented a remarkable controlling temperature capacity, the highest temperature could be maintained at 50 °C during 3 C discharge rate. Meanwhile, a lower temperature difference of the PCM/HP-Liquid than the other two modules was obtained by nearly 3 °C, which displayed a prominent balancing temperature effectiveness. It could be concluded that the above results can provide perspectives in designing and optimizing battery thermal management system.