Cell Tab Cooling System for Battery Life Extension

Recent work by Hunt et al. has shown that pouch cell tab cooling can prolong the cells lifetime by up to a factor of three, compared to surface cooling, because of more uniform temperature distribution. Nevertheless, tab cooling has not found widespread application yet, mainly because of the engineering problem of electrically isolating the tabs, while conducting heat away from them at the same time. Hence this work demonstrates the viability of a novel fluid tab cooling method for battery modules with pouch cells optimized for series production. The design was simulated at system level with a 1D electrical-thermal-hydraulic model in Amesim and the critical geometries were simulated in 3D in Ansys. The performance of this system is sufficient for fast charging at a current of 1C continuously. Sensitivity analyses of the design parameters have shown heat transfer bottlenecks, on the module side the thermal contact resistance between components and thermal conductivity of the cold plate, and on the cell side the small cross area between current collector and tab. The results show that tab cooling can be a viable solution for series produced automotive batteries that support fast charging and highly dynamic power profiles.