Hybrid cooling system with phase change material and liquid microchannels to prevent thermal runaway propagation within lithium-ion battery packs

Abstract

Thermal runaway propagation in battery pack can cause catastrophic hazards without timely countermeasures. This paper presents the establishment of lumped thermal resistance model for battery pack and introduces an innovative hybrid thermal management system designed to suppress thermal runaway propagation. First, a heat generation model describing the reaction dynamics of cell thermal runaway is developed and validated by experiment. Subsequently, a lumped thermal resistance network is formulated for the large-scale battery pack using electrical circuit elements and simulation studies for the thermal runaway propagation are carried out. The results reveal that the thermal runaway propagation progress triggered by four cells can accelerate by nearly 40 % compared to that initiated by a single cell. Consequently, a hybrid thermal management incorporating phase change material and liquid microchannels is designed. Comparative analysis with individual cooling systems demonstrates the superior effectiveness of the proposed system in suppressing the first round of thermal runaway propagation. The temperatures of neighbor cells only have a marginal climb to about 80 ℃ in the initial 600 s, which is well below the thermal runaway triggering temperature. This work can provide valuable insights into the structural design of thermal management systems for battery packs in practical applications.