Passive cooling based battery thermal management using phase change materials for electric vehicles

Lithium-ion capacitors (LiC) are considered as one of the major options for high power applications due to their high power capability. However, thermal runaway associated with the LiC systems in automotive applications due to high-current solicitation can significantly result in a considerable reduction in the vehicles’ performance and life cycle. The purpose of a thermal management system (TMS) is to maintain the energy storage system at an optimum target temperature following by performance and life cycle tradeoff. This paper aims at proposing a passive TMS using phase change materials (PCM). In this regard, the passive TMS is designed, and the performance of the system is analyzed and validated, utilizing Simcenter AMEsim® and the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software, COMSOL Multiphysics®.