Thermal cooling of li-ion cylindrical cells battery module with baffles arrangement for airflow cooling numerical analysis

Abstract

The demand for electric cars continues to grow every day due to their benefits, such as zero emissions, and the downsides of traditional internal combustion engines, such as toxic pollutants. There are some complications in the practical use of batteries, like thermal runaway and decreased battery life cycles and usage. Hence, this research introduced an innovative method to achieve uniform temperature distribution in the battery module and decrease the maximum temperature obtained in the battery cells. The new battery module has been designed by considering the cell holders at different cell heights. These cell holders are like a tray to hold the battery cells and act as fins, enhancing the uniform temperature distribution within the battery module. Base and new battery modules are analyzed at different discharge conditions with the same boundary conditions and physical parameters. The significance of cell holders acting as fins has been evaluated by analyzing the temperature contours and profiles for every cell of the battery module. The analysis of numerical results found that at 1, 2 and 3C rate, the maximum temperatures of 301.5, 303.9 and 308.8 K for base model and whereas for new model these are 300.6, 302.1, and 304 K, respectively. At 1C rate discharge, the temperature gradient among the cells (Tcell4-Tcell6) in the flow directions has been observed as 0.26 °C and 0.04 °C for the base and novel battery model, respectively.