Session: ASME Undergraduate Student Design Expo

Paper Number: 176187

Thermal Management System for Lithium-Ion Battery Array 

Energy supplied by renewable energy production reduces greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Many sources of renewable energy are volatile and unreliable, such as solar and wind. Energy storage coupled with renewable energy production could make a more reliable energy source. Rechargeable batteries, such as lithium-ion, have advantageous qualities, such as high energy density and have been shown to be reliable through many discharge and charge cycles. Although lithium-ion battery systems have peak shaving capabilities, frequency regulation and 95% efficiency, the heat generated during high discharge and charge events may cause battery degradation, thermal runaway, physical damage and loss of function. Traditional air or liquid cooling methods have been widely used for lithium-ion cells, but sometimes fall short in terms of energy efficiency, scalability, and uniform temperature distribution. These methods may provide insufficient cooling for high-power applications or large-scale systems. A large battery array for power grid applications could be designed with temperature sensors, a heat exchanger, and a battery management system (BMS). The BMS would monitor the power and temperature, and control a cooling system to maintain the battery within a desired operational range for temperature. The purpose of this project was to design and test a small-scale prototype module of a battery thermal control system. A two lithium-ion battery module was designed and assembled with sensors for temperature, voltage and current. A heat-exchange system with pipes for flowing water through metal heat sinks adjacent to the batteries was designed and fabricated. The system was also thermally modeled in SolidWorks. To test the physical prototype, a test-bench was developed, which included power resistors as loads, sensors and a custom developed LabView data acquisition system. The power load and pump for water flow were manually controlled for the system during testing in this study. The simulation model showed that heat was not only generated within the battery, but also at the terminals and wires. The testing trials using the physical test-bench heat-exchange system showed that the water flow system appeared to work as intended. However, the batteries under the tested conditions did not generate a significant amount of heat. Thus, it was not confirmed that the heat-exchange system actually cooled the batteries to maintain the temperature. Possibly the power resisters selected for the test procedure did not generate a discharge current that would result in sufficient heat generation during the testing trials. The design of the heat-exchanger for the batteries appeared promising, but revised testing conditions that generate more heat within the batteries would need to be done to confirm that the system would counter heat generated during discharge and charging states. Following further development, such a thermal management system for large arrays of batteries has potential to contribute toward the development of safe and reliable energy storage systems for renewable energy generation, and contribute toward reduced GHG emissions.

Presenting Author: Brady Harkins Wentworth Institute of Technology

Presenting Author Biography: Undergraduate student in Computer Engineering.

Authors:

Ansel Hernandez Wentworth Institute of Technology
Aya El Abdallah Wentworth Institute of Technology
Brady Harkins Wentworth Institute of Technology
Campbell Fowler Wentworth Institute of Technology
Julio Depina Wentworth Institute of Technology
Saurav Basnet Wentworth Institute of Technology
Bo Tao Wentworth Institute of Technology