Modelling for the mitigation of lithium ion battery thermal runaway propagation by using phase change material or liquid immersion cooling

Abstract

In this study, a three-dimensional (3D) thermal runaway (TR) model with conjugate heat transfer submodel is adopted. TR behaviors for a battery pack with 12 prismatic lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are then simulated. Three thermal safety measures of TR protection from internal shorting in Cell 1 to pack level configuration are compared and evaluated. Paraffin phase change material (PPCM) is firstly proposed to delay the TR propagation between LIBs with solid-liquid phase change as heat transfer mechanism. Different thicknesses of PPCMs are compared to verify the TR mitigation performance of the PPCM under thermal abuse condition. The TR time for the Cell 2 is delayed to be 64 s, 266 s and 414 corresponding to PPCM thickness of 1.8 mm, 3.6 mm and 5.4 mm. As the simulation results shows, this TR time can be further delayed to 798 s by a strategy with combing PPCM with insulation. In addition, this work proposes a novel thermal safety protection based on immersion cooling with pool boiling of fluorinated liquid as heat transfer mechanism. We observe that the average temperature of Cell 2 - Cell 12 tends to be within 34 °C under immersive cooling condition, which indicates the possibility to prevent the TR.