Experimental study on the thermal management performance of lithium-ion battery with PCM combined with 3-D finned tube

Abstract

As an important intermediary between the green energy and human society, the lithium-ion battery has promising prospects in the new energy vehicles, energy storage, and green development fields. However, lithium-ion batteries can generate a large amount of heat during operation. In addition, excess temperature or big temperature difference of the surface of the lithium-ion battery can reduce its performance, which also results in reducing its operational life and even triggers incidents such as fires and explosions. Therefore, studying efficient thermal management methods for lithium-ion batteries is crucial for increasing their application range. This paper proposes a novel thermal management method by combining 3-D finned tubes with PCM. The thermal management system maintains a battery operating temperature less than 45 °C and a maximum temperature difference less than 2.4 °C. The influence of different fin structure parameters on the melting dynamics of PCM and the heat transfer performance is then discussed. The obtained results show that under each solid–liquid ratio of PCM, the heat transfer performance increases with the increases of the fin height, while it initially decreases and then increases with the increase of the width and axial spacing. Moreover, the heat transfer performance of the 3-D finned tube with different PCM liquid–solid ratios is investigated. The obtained results demonstrate that for constant fin parameters, the heat transfer reaches its highest performance for a PCM liquid–solid ratio greater than 2:2. The findings of this study lay a foundation for the design of efficient thermal management systems incorporating PCM applications.