Numerical Investigation on the Thermal Management of 18650 Battery Module Using Phase Change Material

Lithium-ion batteries are very popular as an energy storage system for electric vehicles. Efficient heat transfer and overall thermal management of Lithium-ion battery are very essential for optimum performance. During charging and discharging cycles of the battery, considerable heat is produced which requires rapid diffusion. Use of phase change material as a medium of such heat transfer exhibit considerable potential. However, there exists a large variation in thermo-physical properties of the phase change materials, particularly organic PCM. It is very important to understand, transient heat transfer characteristics of these PCM in a single battery cell. A critical review of the available literature suggests a gap in addressing the above issues under different discharge rates. In order to resolve this issue, numerical analysis of a single li-ion battery cell is performed in the present work. In the current work, variations in current density and temperature are studied to understand the heat transfer process with the variations in thermo-physical properties of phase change material. The result exhibits considerable variations in temperature with changing discharge rate. In addition to this, a comparative study is also performed to understand the final temperature rise in the battery at different discharge rates with and without PCM. The current work provides a good insight of the temperature characteristic for efficient thermal management of li-ion battery.