Investigation of the thermal performance of biomimetic minichannel-based liquid-cooled large format pouch battery pack

Abstract

This article presents a diagonal-type minichannel-based thermal management system for a 20 Ah pouch cell battery. An optimal thermal strategy is suggested by numerically investigating the cooling performance of the proposed design for various structural and operational parameters. Besides the design, mini-channel optimization is observed to have played a significant role in pressure drop and temperature. An operational parametric study recommends an inlet temperature of 25 °C and a flow rate of 12.5 cm3/s for the liquid coolant for optimal pouch cell performance. The enhancement of temperature distribution uniformity is noted to diminish at higher cooling fluid flow rates. Further, a comparison with existing literature revealed a 75 % increase in temperature homogeneity across the pouch cell. The feasibility of the proposed design with an optimized cooling framework at the module level is demonstrated for the 43 V battery pack. The thermal system maintained the maximum temperature in the pack 20 % below the upper limit of the recommended range for Li-ion cells. © 2024 Elsevier Ltd