Thermohydraulic performance of ammonia, isopropanol, water and nanofluids as cooling fluid for lithium-ion 1C and 3C rating batteries

Abstract

Cooling Lithium-ion batteries of different C ratings receive excellent attention amongst researchers in thermal management. The present study proposes to investigate the thermohydraulic performance of a wavy channel and compare the finding with the conventional straight channel. The full Navier Stokes equations and the energy equation were solved numerically using the finite element technique. Water is the cooling liquid used in the simulation. The flow is laminar and steady state. It is found that the average Nusselt number is higher as the waviness of the channel wall increases. The average Nusselt number for the wavy channel case was increased by up to 31% compared to the straight channel configuration. Also, the performance evaluation criterion increases by 23% compared to straight channel configuration. Thus, allowing the fluid to absorb more heat. However, at the expense of the pressure drop, the performance evaluation criterion is higher for the wavy wall channel mode than the straight channel wall. Amongst all fluids studied in this paper, including water, ammonia, isopropanol, Ammonia binary mixture and TiO2 nanofluid at different concentrations, ammonia is the most suitable liquid for cooling.