Thermal performance of a lithium-ion battery thermal management system with vapor chamber and minichannel cold plate

Abstract

An effective battery thermal management system is essential to maintain the operating temperature of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles in the optimum range and excellent temperature uniformity. In this work, a novel battery thermal management system based on a vapor chamber and minichannel cold plate is proposed to cool and preheat the battery module. A transient numerical simulation is developed and verified by experiments. The thermal characteristics of three battery thermal management systems are analyzed: natural convection cooling, minichannel cold plate cooling, and mixed minichannel cold plate and vapor chamber cooling. Subsequently, the effects of the discharge rate (1C, 2C, 3C), the arrangement and width of the minichannel cold plate, the coolant inlet velocity and coolant temperature on the cooling performance of the systems are investigated. The research results reveal that compared with natural convection cooling and minichannel cold plate cooling, mixed minichannel cold plate and vapor chamber cooling method exhibits lower maximum temperature and more uniform temperature distribution. When the batteries are discharged at 2C and the coolant temperature is 25 °C, the maximum temperature and temperature difference of the batteries can be maintained at 29.6 °C and 3.5 °C respectively. In addition, the preheating performance of the battery module at subzero temperature is also discussed. The results indicate that the proposed battery thermal management system with vapor chamber and minichannel cold plate also exhibits rapid heating capacity and excellent temperature uniformity.