Experimental Investigation on the Performance of Hybrid Thermal Management System Based on Water Cooling and Phase Change Material for a Lithium Battery Module of an Electric Vehicle

The performance of Li-ion batteries using in electric vehicles is deeply dependent on the temperature. Therefore, applying of a thermal management system (TMS) is necessary for using these types of batteries. In this study, a battery module with hybrid TMS, based on water-cooling and phase change material (PCM) is designed and manufactured, at first. Secondly, using experimental method, the temperature of each cell was measured using active and passive cooling methods and the role of the cooling modes were compared with each other. The results of the study presented here indicate that the temperature of the battery without a cooling system (first cooling mode) in the high discharge rate increases significantly up to 57 C. In the second cooling mode, which is with only PCM, the results showed that PCM greatly reduce the temperature till 32 C (26 C less than the mean temperature in the first cooling mode). In the third cooling mode, the mean temperature of cells reduces to 30.5 C (1.5 C less than the second cooling mode).