Investigation of the use of extended surfaces in paraffin wax phase change material in thermal management of a cylindrical lithium-ion battery: Applicable in the aerospace industry

Abstract

The use of phase change materials (PCMs) for cooling lithium-ion batteries is examined in this research. Because of the unique benefits of lithium-ion batteries, their use in electric cars has gotten a lot of attention. The lithium-ion battery is one of the most extensively utilized components as the heart of a hybrid car. These batteries generate a lot of heat while charging or discharging. If the batteries are not correctly handled, their life will be drastically shortened. In this study, a cylindrical battery is submerged in a PCM-filled chamber. Several fins of the same length are placed on the battery. The aim is to find the ideal battery compartment size and fin count to lower maximum battery temperature during the discharging process. COMSOL Multiphysics commercial software is used for the simulations. The results show that the battery with 15 fins has the best PCM melting performance at the beginning of cooling process. After one third of the cooling time, the maximum melting of PCM that is equal to 26.159% takes place. Also, in the entire cooling process, the lowest maximum temperature and the maximum volume fraction of the liquid occur when the number of fins is 9. The battery temperature rises as the number of fins increases beyond nine. Furthermore, an enclosure with the lowest maximum temperature is supplied to enclosure the lithium-ion battery.