Battery Cooling Options in Electric Vehicles With Heat Pipes

Abstract

In this paper, different options, based on heat pipes, for thermal management of electric vehicle (EV) battery system, at cell, module and pack level, for 40 to 400 W output heat, has been explored, analysed and compared. Cooling architecture based on embedded heat pipe (EHP) with single phase pumped cold plate (CP), as most adaptable design for low to medium range EVs, while EHP with loop heat pipe (LHP) as high performance design for high-end carlines, has been classified as potential cooling systems. Experimentally, it was shown that EHPs will provide best performance for heat acquisition at cell/module level, while LHPs for heat transport at pack/system level. In summary, two phase thermal management system, for lithium-ion battery, will help to improve overall system cooling performance, reliability, safety and reduce design complexity.

A study of different battery thermal management systems for battery pack cooling in electric vehicles

“…Different battery cooling architectures based on two‐ and single‐phase technology 82 [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]…”

“…Singh et al 82 performed a comparison of different HP technology and reveals that HP can enhance local heat removal from cells by 2-3 times more than what is possible with metal spacers, however, integration complexity needs to be addressed in cooling architectures ranging from traditional single-phase pumped cold plate, a hybrid solution with pulsating HP and cold plate loop or embedded HPs and cold plate loop, and total passive solution based on embedded HPs and loop HP have been proposed and investigated for heat transfer from battery modules. From a cost, technology, performance, and budget standpoint, the embedded HP + cold plate F I G U R E 18 (A) Passive Battery Thermal Management System using flat heat pipes with fins (adapted from source 78 ), (B) thermal cooling of prismatic battery using heat pipe (adapted from source 79 ), and (C) front and back side of the prismatic cell with heat pipe in 8 C discharging rate (adapted from source 68 ) pumped loop solution is the most flexible for low-to high-end EVs.…”

“…BTMS, Battery Thermal Management System; HP, heat pipe.F I G U R E 20 BTMS with plug-in OHPs 80. BTMS, Battery Thermal Management System; OHP, oscillating heat pipe.F I G U R E 21 Different battery cooling architectures based on two-and single-phase technology82…”

Low-Order Model of the Dynamics and Start-Up of a Pulsating Heat Pipe

“…This has raised the interest in pulsating heat pipes (PHPs). PHPs have also been investigated for use for battery cooling in electric vehicles (Singh et al, 2021). PHPs have the potential to remove high heat fluxes from small surfaces at low temperature gradients.…”

“…In the literature on PHPs, two foci have developed: On the one hand, there are many papers that investigate the performance of PHPs experimentally (Quan and Jia, 2009;Ma et al, 2008;Song and Xu, 2009;Qu et al, 2009;Khandekar et al, 2003;Singh et al, 2021), often with the goal to correlate performance with design and operational parameters, such as tube diameter, filling ratio, and orientation with respect to the field of gravity. Also note recent experimental investigations on PHP operation in micro-gravity by Taft and Irick (2019).…”