Session: 09-01-01: Electrochemical Energy Storage and Conversion Systems I

Paper Number: 167237

Mitigating Thermal Runaway Risk in Li-Ion Batteries by Utilizing Flow Boiling Heat Transfer Mechanism 

Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries are known to undergo thermal runaway under thermal, physical, and electrical abuse scenarios. These abuse conditions can lead to Li-ion batteries spontaneously combust, release harmful chemicals to the environment, and experience rupture and explosion. To avoid these catastrophic events, much of the work has been conducted on improving thermal stability of battery materials. Past work on improving safety of battery system through system level design has included using sufficient spacing between cells, use of interstitial materials between cells, and vent gas routing strategy [1]. These passive strategies based on managing heat dissipation rate and path have been proven to be effective but are limited in terms of their applicability as they do not effectively remove heat from the cell/module at the risk of thermal runaway. Use of active cooling approach for thermal runaway prevention has been generally limited to simulation study, with only a few studies experimentally demonstrating effectiveness of active cooling under specific abuse scenarios. Many of the active cooling strategies rely on single phase cooling which is sufficient under nominal operating conditions but unable to achieve heat transfer rate high enough to meet the heat dissipation requirement at an advanced stage of exothermic heating in the cell. Active cooling approaches involving phase change heat transfer, such as boiling, have been studied [2], but they use a dielectric coolant with modest latent heat of vaporization which limits its usefulness to being effective only under relatively early stage of exothermic heating. Flow boiling in microchannels with water as the coolant has been demonstrated to achieve extremely high heat transfer rate in CPU cooling application [3-4]. Although these studies indicate the potential in using boiling heat transfer to achieve heat transfer rate multiple folds larger than past active cooling approaches applied for battery thermal management, the highly dynamic nature of exothermic heating during thermal runaway suggest the need for rigorous validation of this approach both using simulations and experiments. There has been a past numerical study that demonstrated potential effectiveness of boiling heat transfer for thermal runaway prevention [5], however, a more comprehensive numerical study combined with experimental validation is necessary to thoroughly evaluate the scenarios under which this approach may help prevent thermal runaway. In the current study, we perform simulation and experimental studies to evaluate effectiveness of boiling in minichannels to prevent or delay thermal runaway at the cell level. First, simulation studies considering exothermic processes occurring in a battery at the risk of thermal runaway are performed under various thermal environments. These thermal environments range from natural convection to boiling heat transfer in minichannels through the use of appropriate convective heat transfer coefficient. The maximum temperature that battery can tolerate without undergoing thermal runaway is determined for each thermal environment considered. This simulation study shows that boiling heat transfer leads to much higher tolerable temperature than all the other conventionally applied thermal strategies for battery systems. The findings from simulation will be supported by experimental validation where boiling heat transfer will be achieved in minichannels under the application of simulated exothermic heating of a battery at the risk of thermal runaway using a well-controlled experimental setup.

 

References

 

1.      Feng, X., Ren, D., He, X., & Ouyang, M. (2020). Mitigating thermal runaway of lithium-ion batteries. Joule, 4(4), 743-770.

2.      An, Z., Jia, L., Li, X., & Ding, Y. (2017). Experimental investigation on lithium-ion battery thermal management based on flow boiling in mini-channel. Applied Thermal Engineering, 117, 534-543. 

3.      Karayiannis, T., & Mahmoud, M. (2017). Flow boiling in microchannels: Fundamentals and applications. Applied Thermal Engineering, 115, 1372-1397.

4.      Prajapati, Y. K., Pathak, M., & Khan, M. K. (2015). A comparative study of flow boiling heat transfer in three different configurations of microchannels. International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, 85, 711-722.

An, Z., Shah, K., Jia, L., & Ma, Y. (2019). Modeling and analysis of thermal runaway in Li-ion cell. Applied Thermal Engineering, 160, 113960.

Presenting Author: Brycen Shiver University of Alabama

Presenting Author Biography: Mr. Brycen Shiver is currently an undergraduate student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Alabama. Mr. Shiver is an active member of the Formula SAE team at the University of Alabama.

Authors:

Brycen Shiver University of Alabama
Krishna Shah University of Alabama
Ricardo Castro University of California, Merced