Thermal performance enhancement on electric vehicle battery with PCM in hot temperature.

This study is about the battery thermal management in the electric vehicle. Lithium-ion battery is the prominent component in the electric vehicle. Proper battery thermal management for lithium-ion batteries is essential to control and maintain safety operating condition, otherwise it causes explosion and fire accidents in battery. To avoid this problem, in this study we proposed phase change materials (PCM), to enhance heat transfer rate in battery. However, pure PCMs with low thermal conductivity is not sufficient to remove heat from battery, hence in this study we selected four different PCMs such as Rubitherm31, Rubitherm15, Expanded Graphite5 and Expanded Graphite26 with high conductivities. Experiments were conducted to identify which PCM is giving better performance even at extreme high temperatures of 50 ℃, Each PCMs are attached on either side of the battery, when batteries are exposed to 50 ℃ and thermal performance is evaluated during discharge condition. ANSYS FLUENT simulation is performed on the proposed BTMS. From the results, it is observed a significant improvement of heat transfer from battery. Expanded graphite PCMs protects the battery for a long time with improvement of 43% in thermal performance and recorded thermal gradient as 19.7 ℃. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]