Thermal management of lithium-ion battery module using the phase change material

One of the significant challenges in the fast adoption of electric vehicles in the market is the thermal management of the battery pack. The current advancement in active and passive cooling techniques is helping resolve this issue in electric vehicles. The present work focuses on the use of passive cooling techniques, such as phase change material (PCM) and the heat sink, to maintain the battery module temperature within the thermal safety limit. The cartridge heaters were used as the mock-up cells. A 3 × 3 array of mock-up cells was formed with a cell-to-cell spacing of 6 mm. OM42 was used as a PCM with a melting point temperature of 44°C and latent heat of fusion, 199 kJ/kg. The experiments were conducted at different power settings of 10–40 W with an interval of 10 W. A heat sink was integrated into the bottom of the battery module. It was observed that increased power input reduces the time required to reach the operating temperature limit of 60°C. After incorporating the PCM, this time was extended by 100.8%, 35.5%, 24.7%, and 21.2% for the power input of 10, 20, 30, and 40 W, respectively. Cell-5 was found to be the most heat-affected cell in the battery module. At higher power inputs of 30 and 40 W, the temperature variation along the height of cell-5 was more than 5°C with and without the PCM. The present findings provide more insights into the heat dissipation at lower and higher power inputs, which may help designers to modify the existing battery thermal management system design efficiently.