Cooling Lithium-Ion Batteries in the Presence of Triply Periodic Minimal Surfaces Structure

Abstract

Lithium-ion batteries are receiving much attention for powering different electrical systems. During charging and discharging, heat generated may cause a fire. Maintaining a low surface temperature is crucial for the safety of the batteries. The uniform temperature distribution is critical to achieve. Flow through the channel has been used for the active cooling of batteries. Air, water and nanofluid are the fluids utilized in the dynamic cooling system. In the present study, we replace the channel configuration with a triply periodic minimal surfaces (TPMS) sheet made of AlSi10Mg with a thickness of 1 cm. The heat generated using 1C and 4C class of batteries is used. The numerical simulation using COMSOL software investigated different types of TPMS thermal performance. A solid gyroid network is the most suitable for such an application compared to a diamond network and I-graph and wrapped package graph (IWP) network for identical porosity. It is found that besides uniform temperature distribution compared to traditional channel configuration, there is an increase of the Nusselt number of 85% compared to the channel configuration. The performance evaluation criteria are increased by 40% compared to the channel configuration. The surface area of the TPMS plays a crucial role in heat extraction. Two parameters that confirmed the performance of the solid gyroid network are the performance evaluation criterion and the perforated ratio. Both indicated that the reliable gyroid network having a porosity of 0.5 is more effective in heat removal for this application.