Experimental study of a liquid-vapor phase change cooling method for lithium-ion battery

This paper proposes a novel battery cooling configuration based on liquid-vapor phase change. The evaporator geometry is customized according to the battery shape to increase the heat transfer area. The heat and mass transport inside the condenser will improve the temperature uniformity. The thermal management performance is experimentally verified. Various operative parameters, such as fill ratio, environment temperature, inlet water temperature, and flow rate, were systematically studied under regular (35–150 W) and high thermal powers (150–350 W), respectively. The results demonstrate that, with regular thermal powers, an inlet water temperature of 20 °C can maintain the battery average temperature below 40 °C in all tested cases. If the inlet water temperature increased to 25 °C, the flow rate needs to be kept at 40 L·h⁻¹ for environment temperature of 20 °C or 60 L·h⁻¹ for environment temperature of 30 °C. The temperature difference is lower than 4 °C under all operating conditions. The flow rate, environment temperature, and inlet water temperature have minimal influence on the temperature uniformity. Compared with a 100 % fill ratio, the 50 % fill ratio performs better in both average temperature and temperature difference. For high thermal powers of 150 W–350 W, this design can still keep the average temperature under 55 °C.