Shape-stabilized polyethylene glycol/tuff composite phase change materials for efficient battery thermal management

Abstract

Driven by the rapid growth of the new energy industry, there is a growing demand for effective temperature control and energy consumption management of lithium-ion batteries. Phase change materials (PCMs) with enhanced thermal energy storage and conversion performances can cool batteries in a timely manner, reducing the risk of high-temperature operation of batteries and improving battery performance. In this paper, a series of polyethylene glycol/tuff composite PCMs with stable shape were prepared by vacuum impregnation method using polyethylene glycol as the organic PCM and tuff as the inorganic support matrix to prevent PCM leakage during the phase transition phase. The results show that the polyethylene glycol/tuff composite PCMs with 55 wt% polyethylene glycol loading exhibits excellent shape stability, reasonable latent heat of melting (75.1 J/g), suitable phase transition temperature (56.7 °C), good thermal reliability, enhanced thermal conductivity (0.46 W/m·K), and better thermal energy storage and release performance. In addition, compared with single cells under high discharge rate of 3C, the surface temperature of the battery can decrease from 64.6 to 44.2 °C with the utilization of 55% polyethylene glycol/tuff composite PCMs, indicating that it have great potential in thermal management of electronics.