Large scale immersion bath for isothermal testing of lithium-ion cells

Abstract

Testing of lithium-ion batteries depends greatly on accurate temperature control in order to generate reliable experimental data. Reliable data is essential to parameterise and validate battery models, which are essential to speed up and reduce the cost of battery pack design for multiple applications. There are many methods to control the temperature of cells during testing, such as forced air convection, liquid cooling or conduction cooling using cooling plates. Depending on the size and number of cells, conduction cooling can be a complex and costly option. Although easier to implement, forced air cooling is not very effective and can introduce significant errors if used for battery model parametrisation. Existing commercially available immersion baths are not cost effective (∼£3320) and are usually too small to hold even one large pouch cell. Here, we describe an affordable but effective cooling method using immersion cooling. This bath is designed to house eight large lithium-ion pouch cells (300 mm × 350 mm), each immersed in a base oil cooling fluid (150L total volume). The total cost of this setup is only £1670. The rig is constructed using a heater, chilling unit, and a series of pumps. This immersion bath can maintain a temperature within 0.5 °C of the desired set point, it is operational within the temperature range 5–55 °C and has been validated at a temperature range of 25–45 °C.