Air jet impingement cooling technique for battery thermal management system

In recent past worldwide automotive industries shifted their focus toward electric vehicle because of their inherent clean characteristics and very low operating costs. In electric vehicle, battery pack hold the lion share of cost from 30% to 50% of vehicle cost. Currently electric vehicles are successfully running in environment like in Norway (-10°C) as well as in India (50°C). Such extreme temperature operating conditions are not suitable for health and performance of batteries. Most of the Li-ion batteries gives optimum life and performance when it operates between 25°C and 35°C. The cell performance is poor while operating at temperatures below 5°C. On the other hand, it has also been observed that the reduction in life expectancy is by 50% when Li-ion cells are operated at 45°C or above. Therefore it is very crucial to have robust battery thermal management system and it has to be compact, safe, economical and energy-efficient as it acts as a parasitic load on the battery system. In line with that, air cooling technique has been evaluated by many EV manufacturers due to its inherent safety, economy, simplicity and robustness of design. In this paper, a novel air jet impingement technique is proposed for battery thermal management of a pack along with the design aspects of air ducts which can result in the required thermal performance. This method of cooling the battery pack is validated for the thermal performance.