Cooling a plate lithium-ion battery using a thermoelectric system and evaluating the geometrical impact on the performance of heatsink connected to the system

Abstract

In this paper, the cooling process of a plate lithium-ion battery cell using thermoelectric is simulated. The cold part of the thermoelectric is placed on the battery and a heatsink with a number of pin fins is mounted on the hot part of the thermoelectric. Pin fins have elliptical, circular, triangular, and trapezoidal shapes. They are placed in a channel saturated with alumina nanofluids (NFs). By changing the Reynolds number (Re) of NFs flow between 300 and 600 for different types of pin-fins, the values of battery and heatsink temperature, NFs output temperature, and pressure drop (DP) are examined. The battery cooling system is modeled using COMSOL Multiphysics software. The findings show that utilizing triangular pin-fins creates the greatest DP in the channel, and the output NFs temperature is greater than using other pin-fins. The oval pin fin leads to the minimum DP and NFs temperature drop in the channel. The use of a triangular pin-fins results in the minimum temperature on the battery and the heatsink, while the elliptical pin-fins cause the maximum temperature (Tm) on the battery and the heatsink. As the Re enhances from 300 to 600, the DP is enhanced 4.85 and 7.67 times for the elliptical and triangular pin fins, respectively.