Thermal Performance Improvement for Different Strategies of Battery Thermal Management Systems Combined with Jute—A Comparison Study

Abstract

Jute is a cheap, eco-friendly, widely available material well-known for its cooling properties. In electric vehicles (EVs), dissipating a huge amount of the heat generated from lithium-ion batteries with an efficient, light, and low-power consumption battery thermal management system (BTMS) is required. In our previous study, jute fibers were proposed and investigated as a novel medium to enhance the cooling efficiency of air-based battery thermal management systems. In this paper, as the first attempt, jute was integrated with a phase change material (PCM) passive cooling system, and the thermal performance of a 50 Ah prismatic battery was studied. Temperature evolution, uniformity, and cooling efficiency were investigated. A comparison between the thermal behavior of the air-based BTMS and PCM-assisted cooling system was performed. The results indicated that adding jute to the BTMS increased the cooling efficiency and especially decreased the temperature development. Furthermore, the temperature difference (ΔT) efficiency was enhanced by 60% when integrating jute with PCM, and temperature uniformity improved by 3% when integrating jute with air-based BTMS. This article compared the integration of jute with active cooling and passive cooling; thus, it shed light on the importance of jute as a novel, eco-friendly, lightweight, cheap, available, and nontoxic material added to two strategies of BTMS. The setup was physically made and experimentally studied for the purpose of BTMS optimization.