Analysis of Microchannel Heat Sinks With Sintered Copper Fibers for Lithium-Ion Battery Cooling

Abstract

Lithium-ion batteries directly power electric vehicles, yet their high heat flux density limits further advancement. Microchannel heat sinks (MHSs) can aid heat dissipation to address this issue. This study proposes a water-cooling system based on an MHS with sintered copper fibers (SCCFs) to satisfy lithium-ion battery cooling. Experiments are conducted to examine how porosity and different composite SCCF influence battery surface temperature and the MHS pressure drop. For simple SCCF, results show that the 75% porosity MHS delivers the best surface-temperature heat-dissipation performance, whereas the 70% porosity design exhibits the largest inlet-to-outlet pressure drop at a given flow rate. For composite SCCF, the 75%–80% composite-porosity MHS achieves the best cooling performance in terms of battery surface temperature, whereas the 70%–75% composite-porosity design produces the highest pressure loss between inlet and outlet under identical flow conditions.