Designing a system for battery thermal management: Cooling LIBs by nano-encapsulated phase change material

This study has designed and employed computational fluid dynamics to cool lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) to keep the temperature constant between 35and45°C. A duct was designed for installing three hot LIBs to be cooled by water and nano-encapsulated phase change material (NEPCM) flow. for this simulation, n-nonadecane with the fusion temperature of 30.44°C was used for NEPCM's core and also water entered the channel with temperature of 30°C. The impacts of the various surface temperature of LIB, Reynolds numbers, and the concentration of NEPCM were analyzed on flow pattern, dimensionless isotherms, melted NEPCM, and heat transfer rate of each LIB. Increasing Reynolds number from 70 to 100 raised the heat transfer rate of LIBs in order of 12.1–17.2%. Furthermore, increasing the volume fraction from 0 to 0.03 escalated the heat transfer rate by 8.2–13.6%.