Experimental study of heat pipes for battery cooling technology in EVs

The modern world is moving towards electric vehicles (EV) due to the increment in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, global warming, and the lack of fossil fuels. EVs can overcome these issues by using batteries instead of fuel. But increasing and maintaining the batteries is a major challenge in EVs because of the large heat emissions from the batteries. In order to overcome these issues and increase the performance of the batteries, a heat pipe (HP) is attached to the passive cooling system. This study aims to improve the performance of batteries and the thermal conductivity of HP with a combination of refrigerant and nanofluid (nanorefrigerant) as working fluids. Copper HP with R-134a or SWCNT is selected for this study. The thermal resistance and thermal conductivity of HP with R-134a and SWCNT were observed for several heat conditions. From the study, it was well observed that changing the working fluid inside the HP affects the thermal performance and the cooling capacity of batteries. Fixing an HP to a battery would decrease the battery’s temperature effectively. Furthermore, increasing the heat power in an evaporator section decreases the thermal resistance and enhances thermal conductivity with the shortest time limit because of Brownian motion.