To prevent the leakage phenomenon and reduce the thermal contact resistance of composite phase change material (CPCM) boards in battery thermal management (BTM) applications, we develop a kind of composite board by enclosing a CPCM plate with a thermal conductive silica gel (TCSG) shell. The compact and flexible TCSG shell effectively prevents the leakage phenomenon and provides a flexible contact interface between the boards and cells to reduce the thermal contact resistance and buffer the compressive stress accumulation. Consequently, the CPCM enclosed with TCSG (TCSG-CPCM) delivers an excellent antileakage performance under high temperatures, even up to 140 °C, and demonstrates a much better temperature-control performance in comparison to traditional CPCM boards in BTM applications. For example, during cyclic charge−discharge tests at the rates of 3C-3C, the maximum temperature and temperature difference of the battery module cooled by TCSG-CPCM boards can be controlled below 52.6 and 4.4 °C, respectively, much lower than those of the battery module cooled by rigid CPCM boards. In addition, no leakage trace, which appears seriously in the bare CPCM board, is detected on the TCSG-CPCM board.
The
development of phase change material (PCM) for battery thermal
management poses key limitations on its reliability caused by leakage
and shape deformation under high temperature. In this work, a kind
of phase changeable and hydrophobic polymer skeleton is grown in situ
in a paraffin (PA)/expanded graphite matrix to obtain the leakage-proof
composite PCM (CPCM) at the kilogram-level. Benefiting from the additional
latent heat provided by the phase changeable alkyl side chains of
the polymer skeleton, the obtained CPCM shows a high latent heat of
120.3 J g–1 coupled with a thermal conductivity
of 2.92 W m–1 K–1. Most importantly,
the three-dimensional cross-linking main chain and the hydrophobic
alkyl side chains endow the obtained CPCM with extraordinary shape
stability under high temperatures up to 250 °C and high PA adsorbing
capability, respectively. As a consequence, the CPCM presents excellent
antileakage performance for the battery module (21 V/16 Ah) under
harsh working conditions, i.e., 50 charge–discharge cycles
at 3C–4C, thus giving rise to a durable cooling performance.
The maximum temperature (T
max) and temperature
difference (ΔT
max) of the battery
module can be controlled constant at 50.9 and 5.0 °C during the
cycles, respectively. By stark contrast, owing to the obvious leakage
phenomenon, the battery module with traditional CPCM adopting a classical
low-density polyethylene skeleton shows increasing T
max and ΔT
max during
the cycles.
In this work, we develop a hybrid battery thermal management (BTM) system for a 7 × 7 large battery module by coupling an epoxy resin (ER)-enhanced phase change material (PCM) module with internal liquid cooling (LC) tubes. The supporting material of ER greatly enhances the thermal stability and prevents PCM leakage under high-temperature environments. In addition, the other two components of paraffin and expanded graphite contribute a large latent heat of 189 J g−1 and a high thermal conductivity of 2.2 W m−1 K−1 to the PCM module, respectively. The LC tubes can dissipate extra heat under severe operating conditions, demonstrating effective secondary heat dissipation and avoiding heat storage saturation of the module. Consequently, during the charge-discharge tests under a 40 °C ambient temperature, the temperature of the PCM-LC battery module could be maintained below 40.48, 43.56, 45.38 and 47.61 °C with the inlet water temperature of 20, 25, 30 and 35 °C, respectively. During the continuous charge-discharge cycles, the temperature could be maintained below ~48 °C. We believe that this work contributes a guidance for designing PCM-LC-based BTM systems with high stability and reliability towards large-scale battery modules.
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