Thermal performance of cold plate based on phase change emulsion for Li-ion battery

A battery thermal management system (BTMS) is responsible for the safety performance of lithium-ion batteries. In this paper, different cooling methods based on phase change emulsion (PCE) containing 10 wt% to 40 wt% paraffin were investigated and compared with a water-cooling system. The three-dimensional thermal simulation results showed that the cooling performance of the mini-channel configuration was better than the baffle plate, fin cooling and jacket cooling methods. Based on the optimized structure of the mini-channel cold plate, the operation conditions for cooling Li-ion batteries were determined to keep the maximum temperature limit of 313 K and maximum temperature difference of 5 K at various discharge rates. There was advantage for the PCE cooling in reducing the pump energy consumption for high discharging rates compared with water cooling. The pump power declined by 24% and 36% for 2.0C discharging when applying the PCE with 25 wt% and 40 wt% paraffin as the coolant, respectively. The cooling with the PCE containing 25 wt% paraffin had 16% less energy consumption for 3.0C discharging.