Thermal Management of Prismatic Lithium-Ion Battery with Minichannel Cold Plate

Abstract

A battery thermal management system (BTMS) is crucial to guarantee that lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries attain high performance, long life, and a high level of safety. To investigate an effective cooling method of prismatic Li-ion batteries for an electric vehicle, a design of BTMS using minichannel cold plates is established. The performance of the BTMS are parametrically studied by using different configurations, flow rates, and inlet coolant temperatures. With this BTMS, the maximum temperature and the temperature difference of the cell at a discharge rate of 2 C is 33.8°C and 3.5°C, respectively, using flow rate of 0.002 kg s−1 and inlet coolant temperature of 30°C. The C-rate is equal to the charge–discharge current divided by its rated capacity. At higher discharge rates, higher flow rates are needed to achieve the cooling performance, and the flow rate has upper limits given the efficiency of the cooling system. When the discharge rate is increased to 3 C and 5 C, the optimal flow rate needed is 0.003 and 0.02 kg s−1, respectively.