Design and Experimental Study on Wave-Type Microchannel Cooling Plates for Marine Large-Capacity Battery Thermal Management

Abstract

In this paper, the wave-type microchannel cooling plates for marine large capacity battery thermal management are designed and tested. The cooling performances of the straight microchannel cooling plate (SMCP), the single-periodic wave microchannel cooling plate (SWMCP) and the double-periodic wave microchannel cooling plate (DWMCP) are experimentally investigated. The maximum temperature (Tmax) and temperature standard deviation (SD) of battery module during charge and discharge process are compared with the variation of the coolant inlet temperature (Tin), volume flow rate (qV) and the environmental relative humidity (RH). The experimental results demonstrate that decreasing Tin, increasing qV and decreasing RH would contribute to lower Tmax but higher SD. The cooling effectiveness of the wave-type microchannel cooling plates are validated by the reduced Tmax and the robustness in SD control. In particular, the newly designed DWMCP with the non-linear wave-type microchannel could relief the contradiction between cooling capacity and the temperature uniformity. For all the working conditions, the DWMCP could manage the Tmax and the SD below 41.5°C and 0.96 °C, respectively.

Keywords: battery thermal management, Wave-type microchannel cooling plate, Double-periodic wave, Temperature standard deviation, Charge and discharge process