A Model‐Based Assessment of Controllable Phase Change Materials/Liquid Coupled Cooling System for the Power Lithium‐Ion Battery Pack
Naixing Yang, Meng Wang, Juan Wang, Liangliang Wang, Yonghong Fu
Abstract
An excellent battery cooling system is required not only to control the battery temperature within a reasonable range, but also to minimize the parasitic power consumption and the failure risk. A simplified thermal model for a pouch battery pack with three cooling schemes is developed in this work, where the battery heat generation rate is calculated by a semi‐empirical equation and the reliability of the thermal model is validated by the battery discharge experiments. Finally, an improved phase change materials (PCM)/liquid coupled cooling system is proposed, and its cooling effects are compared with the traditional liquid cooling scheme, where the start–stop control and the hysteresis phenomenon of the cooling system are considered in the simulations. Compared to the traditional liquid cooling scheme, the phase change materials (PCM)/liquid coupled system decreases the start–stop frequency by less than half (which can reduce the risk of system failure effectively) and reduces the pumping power consumption by at least 60%. In addition, the PCM/liquid coupled cooling system exhibits a higher reliability, whereas the battery temperature usually exceeds the upper limit when cooled with the traditional liquid cooling scheme due to the hysteresis problem of the cooling system.