A novel hybrid battery thermal management integrating phase change material and micro-channel liquid cooling

Battery thermal management system (BTMS) are essential for maintaining battery performance and safety in electric vehicles (EVs). This paper presents a novel hybrid BTMS (HBTMS) designed to improve performance subject to both cooling and heating requirements. The proposed system integrates micro-channel liquid cooling and phase change materials (PCM) used in a novel sandwich hybrid cooling plate (SHCP) design. This study thoroughly evaluates the performance of this design under various operating conditions. The results demonstrate that the proposed design reduces the maximum temperature by 3.86 K and 4.68 K compared with that of the conventional design. In addition, the temperature uniformity of the battery was improved at both the single-cell and module levels. Furthermore, the proposed design avoids introducing additional heating burden and delays the cooling process during low-temperature rest conditions, with the battery temperature increasing by 6.1 K and 11.4 K after 1 h of rest. Specifically, under cycling conditions, the proposed design increased the PCM melting fraction by 0.03–0.04 and enabled rapid latent heat release, while reducing the high-load operation time of the liquid cooling system by 61 % and 67 %, and decreasing the pumping energy consumption by 51–53 %. Finally, the proposed design delays battery thermal abuse under BTMS failure conditions. Overall, the proposed design simultaneously optimizes the cooling and heating functions, providing enhanced thermal performance, improved energy efficiency, and increased safety for EVs battery applications.