Numerical Study on Thermal Performance of Phase Change Materials in a Lithium-Ion Battery

Abstract

The thermal performance of a large format (52.3 Ah) Li-ion pouch battery by PCM (n-octadecane) is investigated. A simplified 1D model was employed to estimate the transient thermal behavior. Two design parameters such as the thickness and thermal conductivity of PCM are considered. 0.5 mm-thickness PCM, especially, n-octadecane integrating with aluminum foams reduced battery temperature to 34.3 °C and 50.7 °C at the end stage of discharging under 3C and 5C discharge rates, respectively. The 1D results compared to the three-dimensional results were enough to predict the temperature dissipation by PCM method at the end of discharging. 1D approach demonstrated evidently that it produces reliable results in predicting thermal behavior of PCM cooling and is superior in practical application with low cost and less time-consuming. Nevertheless, 3D CFD simulation has a capacity to give the detailed temperature uniformity in a cell, which is important factor to design and evaluate a battery cooling system. The cooling performance of fan and PCM-MF was considered to orient to practical applications. The use of four fans (9,000 rpm) can give a similar effective to the use of one fan (5,000 rpm) integrating PCM-MF.