Investigation of the Effectiveness of Thermoelectric Cooler with Stirling Engine Heat Pump for the Cooling of Lithium–Ion Battery Module

Lithium-ion batteries overheat during their actual operation, creating difficulties for their implementation in EVs and HEVs. In this study, a thermoelectric cooler paired with a Stirling engine (TEC+SE) was designed and used as a cooling mechanism for the battery cooling system. Then, the researchers compared the maximum temperature of the battery module at various discharge rates and the power consumption when TEC+SE was used to that of the standard thermoelectric cooler paired with force convection (TEC+FC). The researchers found that TEC+FC still provides better cooling since the battery module had a lower maximum temperature for every discharge rate than TEC+SE. Despite this, power consumption measurement reveals that TEC+SE consumes significantly less power than TEC+FC.