Optimization of liquid cooling for prismatic battery with novel cold plate based on butterfly-shaped channel

Abstract

For maintenance of the batteries working at appropriate temperature, an effective thermal management system is required to handle the heat production during the operating process. In this work, a novel butterfly-shaped channel structure is designed and integrated into the liquid cooling system for the 50 Ah ternary prismatic battery module. First, a comparison of the cooling performance between the butterfly-shaped design and other traditional designs was investigated regarding the maximum temperature, temperature difference, and pressure drop. The calculation results of the desirability function revealed the optimal overall performance of the butterfly-shaped channel. Secondly, the inlet width, outlet width, and the height were set to be 8, 12, and 2 mm respectively while the channel width was adjusted to be 9 mm between the positive and negative terminals upon optimizing structural parameters. Accordingly, the maximum temperature was reduced to 32.72 °C while pressure was dropped to 25.7 Pa as well, demonstrating a 29.1 % decrease compared to the previous configuration. Finally, the effect of the mass flow on the thermal performance of the battery module was carried out. As the coolant mass rate of flow increased, the maximum temperature and temperature difference of the battery module decreased accordingly while the descent rate gradually slowed. In addition, when the mass rate of flow was controlled at 5 g·s−1, the maximum temperature was 30.86 °C, with a 4.96 °C temperature difference where the pressure loss of each cold plate was 338.57 Pa.