Heat transfer characteristics of the integrated heating system for cabin and battery of an electric vehicle under cold weather conditions

The objective of this study is numerically to investigate the heat transfer characteristics of the integrated heating system considering the temperature of cabin and battery of an electric vehicle under the cold weather conditions. The integrated heating system consists of a burner to combust fuel, an integrated heat exchanger for CHE (coolant heat exchanger) and AHE (air heat exchanger). The heat transfer characteristics like the overall heat exchanger effectiveness, the heat transfer rate, the temperature distribution and the fluid flow characteristics like the pressure drop, velocity distribution of the investigated integrated heating system were considered and analyzed by varying the inlet mass flow rates and the inlet temperatures of the cold air and water, respectively. The average Nusselt numbers for the cold air side and the water side were increased 28.4% and 9.5%, respectively, with the increase of the cold air side Reynolds numbers from 15,677 to 72,664 and the water side Reynolds numbers from 4330 to 11,912. The numerical results showed good agreement within ±9.0% of the existed data and thus confirmed that the present model was valid. In addition, the proposed integrated heating system could be used as the thermal management of the cabin and the battery system of the electric vehicle under the cold weather conditions.