Influence of Cross Section and Profile of a Cold Plate Mini-Channels in the Mitigation of Thermal Runaway of Lithium-Ion Batteries

Lithium-ion batteries due to its high energy density, power and light weight attracting as a storage device for electric vehicles. However, due to its poor efficiency at higher discharge rates and working conditions leading to thermal runaway issues. To circumvent thermal runaway and consequent problems, thermal battery management has been suggested to keep the battery under safe working temperature. In the present study, computational simulations have been performed with the use of mini channel cold plate under various discharge conditions with straight and wavy profile of channels on ANSYS Fluent platform. The results of numerical work at 5C rate indicate that wavy channels would reduce the peak temperature with a small penalty on higher power consumption due to higher pressure drop. The straight channel with higher number of channels performed quite well with lower peak temperature difference without much pressure drop.