Thermal management performance of lithium-ion batteries coupled with honeycomb array manifold and phase change materials under microgravity conditions

Abstract

Absence of natural convection in microgravity brings new challenges to the design of battery heat dissipation and cooling systems, which is key to solving the problems of aerospace thermal control systems. A novel model is proposed to numerically investigate the thermal management performance of lithium-ion batteries coupled with honeycomb array manifold and phase change materials (PCM) under microgravity conditions. Compared with traditional battery thermal management system (BTMS), the present study deftly takes advantage of the honeycomb manifold liquid cooling plate to improve the flow distribution and power loss, as well as the isothermal phase transition and energy storage effects of the PCM to better thermal management performance. The finite volume method is used to solve three-dimensional thermal management processes within the hybrid BTMS. Experimental validations are conducted for the heat generation model of battery and the mathematical model of BTMS. Special considerations are shown for the effects of manifold flow structures, inlet and outlet layouts and geometric parameters on cooling performance and energy consumption of BTMS. The numerical results show that PCM coupled with honeycomb array manifold cooling plate of scheme 6 has the advantages of efficient heat dissipation and energy efficiency. The inlet distributed in hexagonal corners of Case 2 has a maximum temperature of about 308 K, which is about 1 K lower than that of Case 1 and its coefficient of performance is about 1.55 times of that of Case 1. For the three cases with TPCM : TC < 1, the variation of pressure drop is within 1.06 %. For the same battery spacing, the ratio of TPCM : TC between 3/7 ∼ 2/3 has better overall performance.