Lithium-ion batteries are widely used for battery electric (all-electric) vehicles (BEV) and hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) due to their high energy and power density. Battery thermal management system (BTMS) is crucial for the performance, lifetime, and safety of lithium-ion batteries. In this paper, a novel design of BTMS based on aluminum minichannel tubes is developed and applied on a single prismatic Li-ion cell under different discharge rates. Parametric studies are conducted to investigate the performance of the BTMS using different flow rates and configurations. With minichannel cooling, the maximum cell temperature at 1C discharge rate is less than 27.8 °C and temperature difference across the cell is less than 0.80 °C using flow rate at 0.20 L/min, at the expense of 8.69e-6 W pumping power. At higher discharge rates, e.g., 1.5C and 2C, higher flow rates are required to maintain the same temperature rise and temperature difference. The flow rate needed is 0.8 L/min for 1.5C and 2.0 L/min for 2C, while the required pumping power is 4.23e-4 W and 5.27e-3 W, respectively. The uniform temperature distribution (< 1 °C) inside the single cell and efficient pumping power demonstrates that the minichannel cooling system provides a promising solution for the BTMS.

Thermal management on lithium-ion batteries is a crucial problem for the performance, lifetime, and safety of electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs). Fire and explosion can be triggered by thermal runaway if the temperature of the lithium-ion batteries is not maintained properly. In this work, a minichannel cooling system was designed at the battery module level, and its efficacy on thermal runaway mitigation was investigated. Nail penetration was employed to simulate the internal short circuits, which in reality may be caused by vehicle collisions and/or manufacturing defects. Two different models were utilized, the conjugate heat transfer model and the reaction kinetics during thermal runaway. Numerical simulations were conducted to understand the thermal runaway process and the effects of flow rate, thermal abuse reactions, nail penetration depth, and nail diameter. It is concluded that minichannel cooling at cell level cannot cease thermal runaway in a single cell, but it can prevent battery fratricide due to thermal runaway propagation between cells.

A new sampling wand concept for ion trap mass spectrometers equipped with discontinuous atmospheric pressure interfaces (DAPI) has been implemented. The ion trap/DAPI combination facilitates the operation of miniature mass spectrometers equipped with ambient ionization sources. However, in the new implementation, instead of transferring ions pneumatically from a distant source, the mass analyzer and DAPI are separated from the main body of the mass spectrometer and installed at the end of a 1.2 m long wand. During ion introduction, ions are captured in the ion trap while the gas in which they are contained passes through the probe and is pumped away. The larger vacuum volume due to the extended wand improves the mass analysis sensitivity. The wand was tested using a modified hand-held ion trap mass spectrometer without additional power or pumping being required. Improved sensitivity was obtained as demonstrated with nano-electrospray ionization (ESI), atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI), and low temperature plasma (LTP) probe analysis of liquid, gaseous, and solid samples, respectively.

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In this paper, a numerical method is presented for simulating the 3D interfacial flows with insoluble surfactant. The numerical scheme consists of a 3D immersed interface method (IIM) for solving Stokes equations with jumps across the interface and a 3D level-set method for solving the surfactant convection-diffusion equation along a moving and deforming interface. The 3D IIM Poisson solver modifies the one in the literature by assuming that the jump conditions of the solution and the flux are implicitly given at the grid points in a small neighborhood of the interface. This assumption is convenient in conjunction with the level-set techniques. It allows standard Lagrangian interpolation for quantities at the projection points on the interface. The interface jump relations are re-derived accordingly. A novel rotational procedure is given to generate smooth local coordinate systems and make effective interpolation. Numerical examples demonstrate that the IIM Poisson solver and the Stokes solver achieve second-order accuracy. A 3D drop with insoluble surfactant under shear flow is investigated numerically by studying the influences of different physical parameters on the drop deformation.