Experimental Investigation on Cooling/Heating Characteristics of Ultra-Thin Micro Heat Pipe for Electric Vehicle Battery Thermal Management

Due to the heat pipes’ transient conduction, phase change and fluid dynamics during cooling/heating with high frequency charging/discharging of batteries, it is crucial to investigate in depth the experimental dynamic thermal characteristics in such complex heat transfer processes for more accurate thermal analysis and design of a BTMS. In this paper, the use of ultra-thin micro heat pipe (UMHP) for thermal management of a lithium-ion battery pack in EVs is explored by experiments to reveal the cooling/heating characteristics of the UMHP pack. The cooling performance is evaluated under different constant discharging and transient heat inputs conditions. And the heating efficiency is assessed under several sub-zero temperatures through heating films with/without UMHPs. Results show that the proposed UMHP BTMS with forced convection can keep the maximum temperature of the pack below 40 °C under 1 ~ 3C discharging, and effectively reduced the instant temperature increases and minimize the temperature fluctuation of the pack during transient federal urban driving schedule (FUDS) road conditions. Experimental data also indicate that heating films stuck on the fins of UMHPs brought about adequate high heating efficiency comparing with that stuck on the surface of cells under the same heating power, but has more convenient maintenance and less cost for the BTMS. The experimental dynamic temperature characteristics of UMHP which is found to be a high-efficient and low-energy consumption cooling/heating method for BTMSs, can be performed to guide thermal analysis and optimization of heat pipe BTMSs.