Cooling effectiveness enhancement of parallel air-cooled battery system through integration with multi-phase change materials

This work presents a numerical investigation of the integration of conventional parallel air-cooling battery system with multi-phase change materials (PCMs) to improve the cooling effectiveness at low power consumption (Pc) rate. The study considers various cells partitioning of the PCMs on nine different parallel air-cooled battery packs. The impact of PCMs pattern schemes, inclination angle of the manifold, and air inlet velocity are analysed by employing finite volume technique coupled with an enthalpy-porosity method. Compared with a typical parallel air-cooling system, despite 90% reduction in the air inlet velocity, the integrated system successfully lowers the maximum temperature (Tmax) by 12.0 K and improves uniformity of temperature distribution based on standard deviation (SDV) of temperature field by 43.9%. Subsequently, inclining the air inlet manifold to an angle close to vertical leads to a poor cooling performance. Also, a proper pattern of PCMs cells partitioning having a trapezoidal cell shape at the top and bottom, and a parallelogram cell shape at the midsection exhibits a better heat dissipation performance. Moreover, compared to the module with highest inlet velocity of 1.5 m/s, reducing the inlet velocity by 66.7% still controls Tmax at 313.13 K which is well below the critical limit, and decreases the Pc by 65.8%. •A comprehensive analysis of integrated traditional parallel air-cooled BTMS is presented.•Thermal performance of the modified battery module based on patterns of PCMs cell partitioning, inclination angle of manifolds, and low airflow rate was investigated.•The effect of various evaluation parameters on thermal behavior are presented.•The cooling effectiveness is remarkably improved.•The optimal pattern of multi-PCMs cells partitioning is obtained.