Measuring and assessing the effective in-plane thermal conductivity of lithium iron phosphate pouch cells

The objective of this research is to experimentally determine the effective in-plane thermal conductivity of a lithium iron phosphate pouch cell. An experimental setup is designed to treat the battery cell as a straight rectangular fin in natural convection. Thermography and heat sensors were used to collect data that yields the temperature distribution and heat transfer rate of the fin, respectively. One-dimensional fin equations were combined with the experimental data to yield the in-plane thermal conductivity through an iterative process that best-fits the data to the model. The experiment was first calibrated using reference plates of different metals. The fin model predicts the thermal conductivity value well with a correction factor of approximately 7%-9%. Using this experimental method, the in-plane thermal conductivity of the pouch cells is measured at different state of charge (SOC) levels. The in-plane thermal conductivity decreases approximately 0.13 Wm−1 °C−1 per 10% increase in SOC for the LFP cells. This translates to a 4.2% overall decrease in the thermal conductivity as the cell becomes fully charged.