Conventional method

Electric vehicle has large Lithium Ion batteries as heart of their working methodology,
they store the energy which is then transferred to the prime mover whenever required. These
batteries are charged externally or by means of regenerative braking or other onboard
technologies. The charge in this battery is because of the ions flowing in them which faces an
internal resistance causing them to produce a heating effect in the cell. Which is then multiplied
further because of the interconnections present in the cell array. And that’s the reason why the
batteries are easily affected or rather much dependant on the temperature characteristic.
They are highly affected because of the heat i.e. they cannot be kept at too high
temperature or to low temperature, if they perform in the above condition there is a serious
effect on the cell both in temporary and permanent way which can be explained by ‘Goldilocks
effect’. In summation to all the reasons mentioned above the main purpose of the battery cooling
system is to keep the battery at an optimum temperature or in an optimum temperature range.
Earlier there was not a pressing need of battery cooling system but now with developing
technology where batteries are getting more compact and with inclusion of fast charging battery
cooling system has become a necessity. This is achieved by following methods which are
mentioned below:
 Air Cooling (fan)
 Liquid Cooling
o Plate Cooling (Surface or Tab)
o Ribbon Cooling (Surface)
 Oil Cooling
 Cooling using Phase Changing Material (PCM)

BMW and AUDI these two famous brands in automobile industry use a plate type
cooling system in their vehicle to maintain their battery pack at an optimum temperature level.
This plate incorporates liquid cooling with the presence of water and glycol as a refrigerant.

Fig 1.1 Fig 1.2

The BMW battery pack has a bottom cooling plate with refrigerant flowing through it
with the help of active components, which provides it with a simpler but heavier construction.
It also uses top mounted terminal tabs which helps with the directional cooling but also results
into improper cooling of the cell which gives rises to ‘hotspots’ in cells. These hotspots on the
cell may damage the cells or result into much worse condition such as ‘thermal runaway’ which
is dangerous for the user as well as the surrounding environment.
 AUDI on the other hand has a better a design when it comes to directional cooling
because of the orientation of the battery pack. It consists of heat exchangers i.e. the cooling
plate are paced between each cell array that is they are interleaved between each array. These
Heat exchangers are positioned in such a manner that they are closer to the bottom end than the
tab end. This design of the cooling system makes t more complex and increases the difficulty
faced in the working of the system. Both the system mentioned above has heavy and bulky
active components and some may have circuitries to avoid thermal runaway and other error
related to battery.
TESLA the world’s leading and
upcoming brand which is
revolutionizing the electric vehicle
industry has a patented cooling system
which maintains the cell at a prescribed
temperature with the help of hydraulic
cooling through a ribbon type of
cooling tubes passing throughout the
cell array. They are sometimes also
referred to as serpentine cooling pipe
that passes through the cell array as
shown in the
Fig 2.1 figure. This ribbon touches the surface
of each cell in the presence of thermal
transfer material so providing the cooling effect that is required in the EV. But even though
after using such method it’s easy to overheat the tesla battery and thus there still remains the
possibility of thermal runaway. Which can lead to a major casualty in near future. This battery
pack also has different active components, an additional heat exchanger, and other circuits
necessary to manage the battery pack.
Future Scope
An amalgamation of cooling system with modified cooling plate and a little use of pcm
heat exchanger is discussed in the paper. However, design having a more pcm based heat
exchanger and a less of the active cooling plate is still to be done. This will reduce the overall
weight of the battery pack due to the exclusion of the active components and will also increase
the versatility of the battery pack. While we should keep in mind that this is an experimental
setup with a smaller number of cells and a low quantity of PCM so a full scale or rather real-
life model will really be beneficial for a more optimised result and to know the other factors
which affect the battery cooling. Some questions which can be asked further are:
 How does the weight and position of the pcm affect the battery cooling?
 Can it also help in other cooling task in the vehicle?
 What other optimization could be done to the cooling plate?
This is a simpler model so we can aim for a more complex model so as to get an overall
working idea. This model can be further simulated for both static and dynamic condition as
well to get a whole spectrum of the results. It should be also tested for adverse temperature
conditions and in different seasons. We should also take the customer requirements and needs
into consideration. This further consideration will help in getting a clearer idea and to make the
battery cooling free from flaws.
Conclusion
In this above experimental setup on a modified battery cooling system consisting of a
new design of cooling plate and pcm type heat exchanger we can expect several outcomes based
on the calculations and analysis done until now, which are as given below
1)Some of the basic outcomes is to have a well distributed temperature graph with a proper
temperature range. Reduction in the overall battery size and its weight. Reducing its
manufacturing as well as its running cost. To increase the capacity so as to provide a higher
range with less frequent charges.
2) The placement of cells in the battery pack affects the cooling of the cell which is a
phenomenon due to the air flowing from the bottom of the electric vehicle. this incoming air
due to the ducts gets transformed into a turbulent flow which thus helps in the cooling of the
battery pack.
3) In this system with modified cooling plate and PCM the heat generated is dissipated more
uniformly. The advantage of using an active cooling component with a passive cooling gives
us a lot of benefits such as in time shifting of the active cooling. the overall vehicle range is
increased by this kind of cooling system.
4) PCM in the HE is really a good agent to absorb the heat but it is seen as to have a low thermal
conductivity which is tackled by using a foam or graphene nano particles. The inclusion of
graphene increases the conductivity and also helps in maintaining the structure of PCM. This
pcm heat exchanger ensures to keep the battery in the optimum temperature range throughout
the operation. In the start of the operation higher amount of heat is cooled by the pcm than the
cooling plate due to its latent heat.
5) It is observed that the pcm is weight sensitive that is if we increase the quantity of it, it just
increases the weight of the overall vehicle but it also increases the latent heat carrying capacity
and also decreases the power required for battery cooling system. Which suggests for a proper
research to find a balancing point so as to get best of both the world.
Overall a modified battery pack was constructed with an optimized and better cooling
plate design with an addition of PCM based heat exchanger which helps the battery pack to
avoid thermal runaway. The positioning of the cell array is also tweaked so as to help the
cooling pattern It also consist of silicon pads or a thermal paste which helps in heat transfer. It
is expected to result in giving an optimum pressure drop in the cooling plate tubes and keep the
cell within a certain temperature range.