Effectiveness of a Helix Tube to Water Cool a Battery Module

Abstract

This chapter presents an investigation of the effectiveness of water cooling a battery module using a heat-sink prototype in the form of a thin copper helix tube within an aluminium block. A thermal model for the module containing six single cells is developed and numerically solved by coupling the heat energy transport equation with the fluid governing equations. The rate of generation of heat from the cells is calculated using a 2D model of a single cell with the resulting heat flux used as a Neumann boundary condition for the energy equation within a computational fluid dynamics code. Particular attention is given to the battery module operating in extreme ambient temperature conditions. The cooling strategy used is shown to satisfy two of the main concerns when managing the thermal performance of a battery module, that is, a suitable operating temperature range is maintained, and there is reasonable uniformity of temperature across the battery mod- ule. This should increase the battery cell life cycle together with enhancement of the charge and discharge performances. Variation of parameters such as the velocity of water within the tube and the number of turns used for the helix were investigated.