Study on multi-channel air cooling thermal management of prismatic power battery pack

Abstract

In this paper, a multi-channel air cooling method has been proposed for the prismatic power battery thermal management system by separating the original one channel into several using windshield, enhancing the heat dissipation capacity of the traditional air cooling system, improving the temperature uniformity of the battery pack. In this study, the temperature increment of the lithium cobalt oxide battery caused by the discharging and the relationship between the electric resistance and the depth of discharge (DOD) have been observed experimentally, furthermore, the cooling characteristics of the multi-channel thermal management system has been studied numerically. As a result, the heat dissipation effectiveness of 3 channels U type cooling system has been found is superior to others. For instance, the maximum temperature and the maximum temperature difference decrease 8.4 K and 12.4 K respectively for the 0.5 m/s air flow velocity, whereas for the case of 5 m/s air flow velocity, both the above 2 values decrease 5.3 K. The maximum temperature and the maximum temperature difference of the battery pack maintain a value in a reasonable range.

Keywords

• prismatic power battery
• air cooling
• battery pack
• multi-channel thermal management