Theoretical and experimental investigations on liquid immersion cooling battery packs for electric vehicles based on analysis of battery heat generation characteristics

Abstract

With the increasingly severe challenges of the thermal management of battery packs for electric vehicles, the liquid immersion cooling technology has gradually attracted more attention due to its superior characteristics such as high heat dissipation efficiency, well temperature uniformity and low risk of thermal runaway. To investigate the heat transfer characteristics of the liquid immersion cooling BTMSs, the 3D model of the 60-cell immersion cooling battery pack was established, and a well-established heat generation model that leveraged parameters derived from theoretical analysis and experiments was incorporated into the 3D simulation to analyze the thermal characteristics of battery pack. The simulation results showed that under the discharging rate of 2C, even with the lowest coolant flow rate in this work (0.2 L/min), no localized abnormal overheating within the battery pack was observed, and the highest temperature was 34.22 °C. The temperature uniformity within the battery pack improved with the increase of the coolant flow rate. It was recommended to maintain a flow rate above 0.5 L/min to ensure a temperature difference below 5 °C. The experimental apparatus of the immersion cooling battery pack was also developed to explore the heat dissipation and temperature uniformity at 2C discharge rate. The simulation results were in well agreement with the experimental results, with the deviation less than 0.43 °C when the flow rate exceeded 0.6 L/min. The effect of the localized high-rate discharge events (4.5C and 6.5C) at different battery pack locations on temperature distribution and uniformity was further discussed based on the verified 3D model. The results suggested that liquid immersion cooling systems offered promising potential for achieving both efficient heat dissipation and preventing thermal runaway in battery packs.