Nanofluid-based cooling of cylindrical lithium-ion battery packs employing forced air flow

Efficient cooling strategies are very important issues in thermal management of lithium-Ion battery system and these techniques should provide cost effective and energy saving solutions for temperature rise of the system during battery operation. A pseudo 2D electrochemical model has been used to investigate the electrochemical and thermal condition of commercial 18650 Lithium-Ion battery. This analysis was compared to previous experimental studies and results showed that the model predicts the temperature rise and thermal power generation very well. Results from the electro-thermal analysis were used to examine a cooling method. In this strategy, the cylindrical Li-ion cell is submersed within a thin cylindrical tank containing water-Al2O3 nanofluid. Air flow is employed to remove the heat from the system during discharge process. After testing this method for a single cell with various sizes of the secondary cylinder, critical and thermally dangerous arrangements of Li-ion cells were analyzed employing the new technique. 3D transient Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations were used to see the effect of presence of the secondary cylinder on temperature rise. Results revealed that the new method reduces the maximum temperature of the cells efficiently.