Heat pipe air-cooled thermal management system for lithium-ion batteries: High power applications

Highlights: • A sandwiched configuration of heat pipes cooling system (SHCS) is suggested for the high current applications. • A computational fluid dynamic (CFD) model using COMSOL Multiphysics® is developed and comprehensively validated with experimental results. • There is a 13.7%, 31.6%, and 33.4% temperature reduction of the battery cell for the cooling strategy using natural convection for SHCS, forced convection for SHCS, and forced convection for cell and SHCS respectively. Thermal management of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries in Electrical Vehicles (EVs) is important due to extreme heat generation during fast charging/discharging. In the current study, a sandwiched configuration of the heat pipes cooling system (SHCS) is suggested for the high current discharging of lithium-titanate (LTO) battery cell. The temperature of the LTO cell is experimentally evaluated in the 8C discharging rate by different cooling strategies. Results indicate that the maximum cell temperature in natural convection reaches 56.8 °C. In addition, maximum cell temperature embedded with SCHS for the cooling strategy using natural convection, forced convection for SHCS, and forced convection for cell and SHCS reach 49 °C, 38.8 °C, and 37.8 °C which can reduce the cell temperature by up to 13.7%, 31.6%, and 33.4% respectively. A computational fluid dynamic (CFD) model using COMSOL Multiphysics® is developed and comprehensively validated with experimental results. This model is then employed to investigate the thermal performance of the SHCS under different transient boundary conditions.