Performance investigation of electric vehicle battery thermal management system using nano fluids as coolants on ANSYS CFX software

Abstract

AbstractBecause of their sophisticated cell chemistry when compared to other types of cell technology now in use, lithium‐ion batteries are commonly used in electric vehicles. These lithium‐ion cells must be operated within certain range of working temperatures but as the energy requirements increase the cells cross the operating bandwidth of temperature and thus cooling of lithium‐ion batteries becomes necessary for its optimal performance. Battery cooling has thus emerged as an important area of research as lithium‐ion batteries do not perform well on higher temperature ranges. Thus, cooling of the batteries using a cooling system is been focused upon and various battery cooling techniques are developed using various coolants such as air, liquid, phase change material and many more. The current study is focused on the use of liquid cooling method for cooling the lithium‐ion battery pack. This paper focuses on the use of nano fluids as coolants for cooling of the lithium‐ion battery pack due to its enhanced thermal conductivity and low viscosity at higher temperature which cools the battery pack. Nanoparticles such as aluminium oxide, titanium dioxide and copper oxide which when mixed with water (base fluid) form the nano fluid solution whose properties are simulated using governing equations. The paper also validates the cooling performance of nano fluids over currently used coolants using ANSYS CFX solver. The findings reveal that using nano fluids as coolants definitely aids in lowering battery pack (BP) temperatures, and nano fluids have a higher heat rejection rate than water. Comparing aluminium oxide, copper oxide, titanium di‐oxide as a coolant for battery thermal management system, Al2O3 nano fluids exhibit the greatest temperature reduction, followed by CuO and TiO2 nano fluids, respectively.