Effective temperature control of a thermoelectric-based battery thermal management system under extreme temperature conditions

Abstract

To effectively control the battery temperature at extreme temperature conditions, a thermoelectric-based battery thermal management system (BTMS) with double-layer-configurated thermoelectric coolers (TECs) is proposed in this article, where eight TECs are fixed on the outer side of the framework and four TECs are fixed on the inner side. Furthermore, a transient fluid-thermal-electric multiphysical field coupling model is developed to assess its dynamic thermal performance. To highlight the merit of the proposed concept, the proposed thermoelectric-based BTMS is compared with the traditional BTMS configuration without TECs, and parametric (TEC input current, air convection heat transfer coefficient, and coolant velocity) studies are conducted at the high temperature limit (313.15 K) and the extremely low temperature (268.15 K). Results indicate that the traditional BTMS configuration without TECs fails to achieve rapid cooling of the battery, and the introduction of TECs can effectively control battery temperature. In addition, if the input current of TECs is augmented, the BTMS would exhibit superior cooling performance. Correspondingly, the stable maximum temperature (T_max) would depreciate from 308.41 K to 306.32 K upon increasing the current from 1 A to 5 A. It is worth highlighting that even a small input current of 1 A meets the thermal management needs of batteries. The thermoelectric-based BTMS can also effectively preheat batteries at extremely low temperatures, reaching the optimal operating temperature of 293.15 K in 555 s with a 1 A input current, and reduced to only 95 s when the current is increased to 3 A. This paper provides a new strategy for battery thermal management.