Thermal management system for prismatic battery module with biomimetic cephalofoil fin and film heater

Abstract

For the air-cooling thermal management system of prismatic battery module applied in energy storage system, a form of biomimetic cephalofoil fin coupled with phase change material is presented and integrated with film heaters to conduct the functions of cooling and preheating. The numerical model with experimentally measured heat generation rate and specific heat capacity was established to evaluate performance of the proposed battery module. First, the battery module performance is analyzed in relation to the effects of different filling types and fin structures. As Compared with the case without filling, the phase change material sheet with thickness of 1 mm can reduce the maximum temperature of the battery module by 3.63 °C. Moreover, by combination of cephalofoil fin structure and phase change material sheet, the maximum temperature can be further reduced by 6.65 °C. Then, the investigation of fin structure parameters is carried out and the many-objective optimization and local optimization are conducted subsequently. It shows that the battery module temperature inconsistence can be improved by narrowing the flow path of cooling air or weakening the heat dissipation of the upstream batteries. For the optimal configuration, the maximum temperature and temperature difference can be maintained within 40 °C and 5 °C, respectively, at ambient temperature of 25 °C and C-rate of 2C. Moreover, a minor temperature rises of 5.44 °C is achievable with C-rate of 1.5C at higher ambient temperature of 40 °C. Finally, with the use of film heaters, the volume-average temperature of the battery module can be preheated from −5°C to 20 °C with a good temperature consistency of 1.2 °C within 10 min.