Airflow reorganization and thermal management in a large-space battery energy storage container using perforated deflectors

The present paper numerically investigates the air-cooling thermal management in a large space energy storage container in which packs of high-power density batteries are installed. The validated porous media model is applied for simplification and the airflow distribution in the overhead duct, vertical ducts, side-in and front-out battery packs and hot-aisle channel are analyzed. The mechanism of airflow reorganizing by perforated deflectors is demonstrated and the influence of the angle and position are recognized by using orthogonal method. Then, perforated deflectors with various porosities are utilized to improve the airflow uniformity in vertical ducts. Result shows the pressure loss caused by perforated deflectors is not sensitive. When applying deflectors in the overhead duct, the airflow can be reorganized to achieve more uniform distribution and hot-spot elimination. The standard deviation of the volumetric flowrate σ_flo is used to reflect the flowrate uniformity, which can be reduced to 0.003, indicating 98.24% reduction in comparison to the initial case without perforated deflectors. When applying the optimized layout into a practical asymmetrically distributed energy storage container, the maximum temperature at the battery rack inlet is reduced by 8.31 °C and 5.13 °C on the long-flow side and short-flow side, respectively.