Experimental investigation on battery thermal management strategy applying water retention material

The thermal issue of the quantities of electronics especially batteries during practical application has always been a big concern. To better satisfy their heat dissipation demands in engineering application, a novel half-passive strategy applying water retention material was proposed in this research. The thermal management assembly containing silica pad, copper foam and water-diatomite mixture is attached on the surface of the constant heating source. Primarily, the effectiveness of the assembly was validated through comparative experiments, which turned out to lengthen the effective time by 125.6 %. Then, the effects of both internal and external control parameters including ambient environment, heating power, properties of the water-diatomite mixture, PPI (pores per linear inch) of the copper foam and mesh number of the diatomite were discussed on the heat dissipation ability evaluated by the maximum temperature (T_max) and effective time (t). At last, the cooling performance with different intermittent spray mode of the assembly during longtime operation was investigated. Results showed that when heated with 11.0 W, the spray began at 45 °C and the intervals were set as 5 min, 7.5 min, 10 min with the water content in each spray of 3.0 g, 4.0 g, 5.0 g respectively were the most reasonable schemes, and the CF-D (copper foam-diatomite) assembly managed to control the maximum temperature around 46.0 °C. This novel design provides a practical reference for the further optimization on the battery thermal management system, which focused more on the cooling efficiency and control flexibility.