STUDY ON THERMAL UNIFORMITY AND IMPROVEMENT FOR THE DRYING OF LITHIUM-ION BATTERIES

Moisture has a serious impact on the safety, capacity, and resistance of lithium-ion batteries. In this study, we present a battery dryer which can quickly dry a lithium-ion battery and can provide high-uniformity surface temperature. Finite volume method is used to solve the numerical model. The convection terms in governing equations is based on the quadratic upwind interpolation of convective kinematics scheme. The well-known semi-implicit pressure-linked equation algorithm is employed to treat the coupling of pressure and velocity fields. It is confirmed that heat radiation is the primary heat transfer mode due to low thermal conductivity and low velocity of airflow, as well as high temperature at the surrounding walls of the dryer. Results show that removing the heating power at the back region of the dryer benefits uniform battery surface temperature; adding heating power in the top and bottom walls of dryer can improve the temperature rising rate. Furthermore, the obtained results can provide some ideas for the design of the dryer used in the lithium-ion batteries.