Effect of Heatpipe Array Condenser Section Length on Thermal Cooling of Li-Ion Batteries

One of the new methods for ensuring that the battery in a thermal energy storage system is kept at the proper temperature is the heat pipe-based Thermal Management System (TMS). In this study, the improvement of cooling performance of a heat pipe based TMS is examined through the variation of condenser section length of heat pipes in an array. The TMSs with an array of heat pipes with different condenser section lengths are considered. The system performances are evaluated using a validated numerical method. The results show that a heat pipe-based TMS provides the best cooling performance when a wavy-like variation is employed and when the condenser section length of the last set of the heat pipe in the array is greater than that of the penultimate set. The maximum cell temperature and the maximum temperature difference within the cell of this TMS are decreased by 4.2 K and 1.1 K, respectively, when compared to the typical heat pipe based TMS with zero variation in its condenser section length. Conclusively, the strategy offers an improvement in the thermal uniformity for all the TMS cases.