Investigation of battery thermal management system with considering effect of battery aging and nanofluids

•A model coupling electrochemistry, battery aging and heat transfer is developed.•The comparison between different coolants and nanofluids is performed.•BTMS shows poor cooling capacity due to SEI formation inside the aged battery.•Dispersing nanoparticle into BTMSs can improve thermal behaviors of aged battery.•Nanoparticle shapes have a significant effect on BTMS overall performance. In this research, a novel model considering electrochemistry, battery aging and heat transfer is developed for the design and optimization of battery thermal management system (BTMS) to ensure efficient and durable operation of batteries. The multiphysics behaviors in different working cycles of BTMSs are analyzed and compared. It is found that solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) formation inside the aged battery pack leads to the higher heat generation rate, which is the main reason that BTMSs only provide effective cooling performance in the initial working cycles but fail to control the battery temperature after 1000 cycles. Meanwhile, BTMS with water provides the lowest maximum temperature and temperature difference with the lowest pressure loss, which were 5.14 K, 4.33 K, 3.79 K and 3.94 K, 3.51 K, 3.2 K and 2772.7 Pa, 3980.9 Pa, 5271.8 Pa lower than those of BTMS with EO, were 2.17 K, 1.66 K, 1.37 K and 1.79 K, 1.43 K, 1.19 K and 544.4 Pa, 758.1 Pa, 984.3 Pa lower than those of BTMS with EG. In addition, BTMS with water also showed the best performance in controlling SEI formation and capacity fade, leading the highest average potential. Furthermore, dispersing nanoparticles into BTMSs can further enhance the cooling performance with a higher pressure loss, and BTMS with water-based nanofluid achieves the best performance. Besides, the cooling performance of BTMS increases with increasing volume fraction of nanoparticles, although the pressure loss is also higher. Nanoparticle shapes also have a significant effect on battery thermal behaviors and electrochemical performance. With brick-shaped nanoparticles, BTMS well cools the battery pack and reduces the battery capacity fade. For comparison, BTMS with spherical-shaped nanoparticles achieves the lowest pressure loss with providing favorable thermal manage for battery pack.