Investigation of a Passive Thermal Management System for Lithium-Ion Capacitors

Lithium-ion capacitors (LiCs) have emerged as a promising technology for automotive applications due to the solution offered by their power density, high voltage operation and their excellent durability (more than 2 million cycles). Nevertheless, the reliability of LiCs can be drastically affected by overheating issues which raise the importance of thermal management. Nowadays, active cooling is employed to keep the battery systems temperature in range. However, due to the bulkiness and weight of the existing active cooling systems, latent heat thermal energy storage through the use of phase change materials (PCMs), represents an attractive way. In this paper, paraffin is investigated experimentally and simulated as a PCM cooling solution for the thermal management of a dual-LiC module. Moreover, since paraffin presents a low thermal conductivity characteristic, an additional component such as aluminium mesh grid is inserted to the system to solve the low conductivity issue. Results show good performance of the Al-PCM on the battery thermal management for both ESSs with a relatively lower temperature. The Al-PCM combination was able is lower the temperature to 36 °C compared to natural convection (46 °C).