Cooling of lithium-ion battery assemblies using nanofluids by heat sink

In the present study, the cooling of a pack of lithium-ion batteries in micro-channel heatsink with wavy microtubes was investigated in the presence of silver/water-ethylene glycol (50:50) nanofluid. ANSYS FLUENT software and SIMPLE method are used to solve the equations and coupling of velocity and pressure fields. The results show that this system can maintain the lithium-ion temperature between 295 and 305 K. At all studied concentrations, the maximum temperature difference at the surface is 5 and 7 K, respectively. It is also found that increasing the nanofluid concentration provides a more uniform temperature. At higher Reynolds numbers, although the temperature distribution is more uniform, increasing the nanofluid concentration has no significant effect. For example, at Re = 300, the improvement of surface temperature uniformity is 4.5% with increasing the concentration from zero to 1%. On the other hand, an increment in the Reynolds number has a negative effect on the pumping power of the coolant. Also, the rate of thermal and frictional entropy generation decreases with the volume fraction of nanoparticles, so that at a concentration of 1%, the rate of reduction of frictional entropy relative to pure fluid is 9%.