Thermal management of standby battery for outdoor base station based on the semiconductor thermoelectric device and phase change materials

In order to extend the life span of standby battery for outdoor base station, a semiconductor thermoelectric device/phase change materials (PCMs) coupled battery thermal management system (BTMS), as well as the three-dimensional model of 48 V 80 Ah battery pack, was designed in this paper. The effect of various influencing factors, especially semiconductor thermoelectric device arrangement, temperature range of thermal management, cooling and heating power was investigated numerically. The results showed that the semiconductor thermoelectric devices were arranged at two flanks of minimum size direction could effectively improve the uniformity of battery module temperature field and prolong the heat preservation process. When the temperature difference between upper or lower limit of thermal management temperature range and the phase change temperature of PCMs (TPCM) was no more than 5 K, the maximum temperature difference (ΔTmax) of battery module during the cooling or heating process was lower than 5 K. Both the best choice of cooling and heating power was 200 W. What's more, after 1 C discharging and 0.5 C charging process, the maximum temperature (Tmax) of battery module was restrained under the 312 K. During continuous cooling and heat preservation cycle, the cooling time and heat preservation time was about 14 h and 4.15 days, respectively, when the average ambient temperature was 323 K. The simulation results will be useful for the design of PCMs based battery thermal management system for outdoor base station battery.