Study the thermal management of Li-ion batteries using looped heat pipes with different nanofluids

Abstract

The production of electric vehicles and their accessories is grooming day by day in the automotive industry. The heart of these electric vehicles is the power source, which is known as batteries. The capacity and performance of such batteries demand a high rating, due to the customer's need and improved vehicle features. Unfortunately, the batteries are facing thermal failures caused by the poor thermal management approach. Li-ion batteries are the most familiar ones which have a very high energy density compared to others. But, these batteries lead to the breakdown of ions and lithium plating because of the fluctuation in temperature distribution and fast charging characteristics. The temperature distribution varies with respect to loading and application. However, this process is accompanied by thermal runaway, which may result in the fatal destruction of batteries. To overcome such issues, the present work selected looped heat pipes (LHP) as a device to transfer the excessive temperature on batteries using nanofluids. Water, Ethylene glycol and acetone were selected as working fluids along with graphene oxide (GO) Nanoparticles. The experiment is conducted for a constant heat input of 30W and various filling ratios (20%, 35%, 50%, 65%). Stability, thermal conductivity, thermal resistance and temperature distributions are discussed. The experiment results are validated with Computational fluid dynamics.

Keywords

• Heat pipe
• Nanofluids
• Li-ion battery
• Cooling system
• CFD