On thermal management of pouch type lithium-ion batteries by novel designs of wavy minichannel cold plates: Comparison of co-flow with counter-flow

The liquid cooling technique is the most preferred technique among the common methods of battery thermal management (BTM) due to its greater compactness and better efficiency. The temperature uniformity within batteries, mainly when they operate under extreme conditions (thermal runaways) is of utmost importance because a uniform temperature distribution can noticeably affect the performance, safety, and lifetime of batteries. Concerning this issue, novel wavy minichannel cold plates are proposed to establish better thermal management and temperature uniformity in pouch type lithium-ion batteries. The considered cases have variable wave amplitudes, which are varied in each wavelength of the wavy minichannels. These cases are investigated for the co-flow and the counter-flow patterns to improve conventional wavy cold plate temperature gradient problems in the laminar flow regime. The results indicate that replacing the conventional wavy cold plate with novel designs can improve temperature uniformity and decline the corresponding factor by 38.7%. It is found that a cold plate with the counter-flow pattern has a better temperature uniformity than the case with the co-flow pattern. Moreover, it is worth mentioning that the temperature distribution and uniformity of the conventional model are considerably influenced by the flow pattern compared to the novel cases. Using a counter-flow pattern in the conventional case leads to 73.1% decline in the maximum temperature difference compared to the co-flow pattern. •Non-uniform wave amplitudes are introduced into wavy minichannels cold plate for BTM.•Temperature uniformity and pressure loss are is used as overall evaluation criteria.•Temperature uniformity is improved in the counter-flow pattern of fluid.•Case with large wave amplitudes at the middle part has better performance in BTM.