A novel thermal management structure using serpentine phase change material coupled with forced air convection for cylindrical battery modules

Abstract The temperature control technology based on phase change material (PCM) demonstrates excellent performance in the field of battery thermal management. However, the compact and bulky structure of the traditional composite PCM (CPCM) module reduces the energy density of the battery pack greatly, and is unfavorable to the secondary heat dissipation. In this work, we develop a novel PCM cooling structure by substituting the common block-shaped CPCM (B-CPCM) module with serpentine CPCM (S-CPCM) plates. The S-CPCM plates with high shape stability provide a much larger surface area and many air flow channels in comparison to the B-CPCM module, thus endowing the module with outstanding secondary heat dissipation capability. For example, under the same fan power of forced air convection (5.2 W), the S-CPCM module delivers a much lower maximum temperature than the B-CPCM module (51.9 vs. 54.2 °C) during the repeated charge-discharge process. As highlighted here, on the basis of guaranteeing the cooling performance, the S-CPCM cooling structure also saves ~70% of the CPCM amount, and thereby the energy density of the battery module is increased by 13.8 Wh kg−1.