Thermal management of large-sized LiFePO4 pouch cell using simplified mini-channel cold plates

Abstract

An efficient, simplified mini-channel cooling plate-based thermal management system is presented for LiFePO4 pouch cell. The proposed design improves the uniformity in surface temperature difference by more than 100% compared to existing literature data on similar designs. The proposed coolant design is tested for temperature distribution and cooling efficiency parameters by varying the cooling fluid volume flow rate and inlet temperatures from 15 ml/min to 150 ml/min and 5 °C to 35 °C, respectively. The proposed design maintains the maximum temperature in the cell well below 40 °C even under a 4C discharge rate and a high coolant inlet temperature of 35 °C. Increasing the coolant temperature is observed to positively impact the temperature homogeneity in the pouch cell. Further, an increase in the cooling liquid flow rate is observed to have a reduced impact on the maximum temperature reduction at all discharge rates. In comparison with the existing minichannel-based study, the proposed cooling system improved the temperature uniformity of the pouch cell by more than 140%. The proposed simple design is easily scalable to modular packs of pouch cells.