Graphene based thermal management system for battery cooling in electric vehicles

In this work, a graphene assembled film integrated heat sink and water cooling technology was used to build an experimental set-up of a thermal management system to demonstrate the possibility to achieve efficient cooling of the propulsion battery in electric vehicles. The experimental results showed that the temperature decrease of a Li-ion battery module can reach 11 degrees C and 9 degrees C under discharge rates as of 2C and 1C, respectively. The calculated thermal resistance of the graphene based cooling system is about 76% of a similar copper based cooling system. Surface modification was carried out on the graphene sheet to achieve a reliable bonding between the graphene sheet and the battery cell surface. This work provides a proof of concept of a new highly efficient approach for electric vehicle battery thermal management using the light-weight material graphene.