Experimental study on the thermal management performance of battery with ultra-thin vapor chamber under liquid cooling condition

To address the demand for high energy density and efficient heat dissipation in electric vehicle (EV) battery systems, a thermal management solution combining liquid cooling with ultra-thin vapor chamber (UTVC) is proposed to address the heat dissipation of LiNi1-x-yCoxMnyO2 (NCM) battery. The adopted UTVC can address the large area of the pouch battery heat dissipation, and the thickness is controlled at 1mm, which ensures compactness with good temperature uniformity. The study experimentally validates the effectiveness of this battery thermal management system (BTMS) and investigates the effect of cooling conditions including coolant flow, coolant temperature and intermittent cooling on the performance as well as energy efficiency of the BTMS. The results show that the thermal management solution can significantly limit the temperature difference of the battery, as well as the maximum temperature, especially at high discharge rates. Adjusting the coolant temperature reduces the battery temperature, but slightly increases the battery temperature difference, while increasing the coolant flow to a critical value will not significantly change the thermal management performance. In addition, adjusting the continuous cooling to intermittent cooling still ensures the performance of thermal management and reduces energy consumption. Under reasonable intermittent settings, the system energy consumption can be reduced by 83.12%.