Due to climate change, the energy system needs to change from traditional fossil fuels to be dominated by renewable energy sources. Not only the energy system, but the increasing number of vehicles and emissions from the transport sector are a problem for climate change and that need to be solved. Both can be solved with batteries, to handle climate change issue. The lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have a high energy density which is important due to the less needed materials for the batteries. LIBs can be used in a battery energy storage system (BESS) to store the excess energy for later usage, and as an electric vehicle (EV) battery. For these high energy density batteries, there comes drawbacks such as safety issues by deviating temperatures which have effects on the capacity, lifetime, performance, and in worst case a thermal runaway can occur which may lead to fire and explosions. These temperature issues can be solved with a battery thermal management system (BTMS), which can manage temperature deviation. Cylindrical battery cells with the dimension 18650 with the cell chemistry Lithium-Nickel-Cobalt-Aluminum-Oxide (NCA) will be investigated with different discharge rates, how the heat generation increases, and how it can be handled by cooling systems. A battery pack will be built up in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software called Ansys Fluent, to be simulated and see how the influence of cooling methods affect the energy density of the 18650 batteries. Air-cooling and liquid-cooling with fan as air-cooling and plate cooling as liquid cooling will be used in this work. 20 cells were investigated with air and liquid cooling, with two different cases with air-cooling. 100 cells with just liquid cooling during 0,5C was investigated on how the number of cells impacted on the energy density. It was seen that the different discharge rates (C-rate) had an impact on the amount of cooling, with air cooling being not as good as liquid cooling for cooling the battery pack and more flow was needed. The energy density in relation to weight showed that 20 cells with less spacing using air-cooling had the best energy density at 196,68 Wh/kg. It was also seen that the number of cells had an impact on the energy density in relation to volume. With the best energy density with 100 cells using liquid cooling at 279,96 Wh/L.

Les travaux présentés dans cette thèse concernent l'étude thermique des batteries Li-ion en vue d'une application de gestion thermique pour l'automobile. La compréhension des phénomènes thermiques à l'échelle accumulateur est indispensable avant de réaliser une approche de type module ou pack batterie. Ces phénomènes thermiques sont mis en évidence à partir d'une modélisation thermique globale de deux accumulateurs de différentes chimies, en décharge à courant constant. La complexité du caractère résistif de l'accumulateur Li-ion a mené au développement d'un modèle prenant en compte l'interaction entre les phénomènes électrochimiques et thermiques, permettant une approche prédictive de son comportement. Enfin la réalisation de deux boucles expérimentales, de simulation de systèmes de gestion thermique d'un module de batterie, montre les limites d'un refroidissement classique par air à respecter les critères de management thermique. En comparaison, le second système basé sur l'intégration innovante d'un matériau à changement de phase (MCP) se montre performant lors de situations usuelles, de défauts ou encore lors du besoin d'une charge rapide de la batterie. / This work relates to the thermal study of Li-ion batteries in order to develop an optimized battery thermal management system. The understanding of thermal phenomena at cell scale is essential before to undertake an approach of the battery module or pack. Galvanostatic discharges of two kind of Li ion cells are modeled to highlight thermal phenomena. The complexity of the resistive behavior of Li-ion cell led to the development of an electrochemical-thermal coupled model to get a predictive approach. Then, two experimental tests benches were designed so as to compare two battery thermal management systems (BTMS). Restrictions of air cooling highlight its disability to achieve thermal management criteria. Innovative integration of a phase change material (PCM) was then tested under several uses of the battery module. This new BTMS showed really promising performances during intensive driving cycles, failure tests, and when a fast charge is needed.

Batteries are promising sources of green and sustainable energy that have been widely used in various applications. Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have an important role in the energy storage sector due to its high specific energy and energy density relative to other rechargeable batteries. The main challenges for keeping the LIBs to work under safe conditions, and at high performance are strongly related to the battery thermal management. In this study, a critical literature review is first carried out to present the technology development status of the battery thermal management system (BTMS) based on air and liquid cooling for the application of battery energy storage systems (BESS). It was found that more attention has paid to the BTMS for electrical vehicle (EV) applications than for stationary BESS. Even though the active forced air cooling is the most commonly used method for stationary BESS, limited technical information is available. Liquid cooling has widely been used in EV applications with different system configurations and cooling patterns; nevertheless, the application for BESS is hard to find in literature.To ensure and analyze the performance of air and liquid cooling system, a battery and thermal model developed to be used for modeling of BTMS. The models are based on the car company BMW EV battery pack, which using Nickel Manganese Cobalt Oxide (NMC) prismatic lithium-ion cell. Both air and liquid cooling have been studied to evaluate the thermal performance of LIBs under the two cooling systems.According to the result, the air and liquid cooling are capable of maintaining BESS under safe operation conditions, but with considering some limits. The air-cooling is more suitable for low surrounding temperature or at low charging/discharge rate (C-rate), while liquid cooling enables BESS to operate at higher C-rates and higher surrounding temperatures. However, the requirement on the maximum temperature difference within a cell will limits the application of liquid cooling in some discharge cases at high C-rate. Finally, this work suggests that specific attention should be paid to the pack design. The design of the BMW pack is compact, which makes the air-cooling performance less efficient because of the air circulation inside the pack is low and liquid cooling is more suitable for this type of compact battery pack.

Environmental concerns, resource depletion, energy security, technological advancements, and global policies are just a few of the variables influencing the global energy perspective. In the case of technological advancement, lithium batteries play a key role in the development of a more sustainable energy infrastructure. The high energy density and long lifespan of lithium batteries make them ideal for usage in a broad range of applications, such as portable electronics, electric vehicles, and grid-scale energy storage for renewable energy sources. However, there are certain possible concerns regarding the safe operation and performance of lithium batteries, most of which are associated with the temperature sensitivity of lithium batteries. Hence, battery thermal management systems are an essential component of a battery package for regulating the temperature level in lithium batteries to avoid the aging process, poor performance, and safety issues.   Many studies have been conducted to develop battery thermal management systems with improved cooling performance. Within this framework, Paper A in this licentiate thesis considers how the design of a lithium battery cell may be improved to reduce the thermal load on the thermal management system. An analytical model based on the integral transform technique is developed to accurately and efficiently predict the thermal behavior of a cylindrical lithium battery cell. Following model validation, the thermal behavior of cylindrical lithium-ion battery cells with different jelly-roll layers and can sizes are compared. The results demonstrate that 21700 cylindrical battery cells outperform other types of cylindrical battery cells in terms of thermal performance. Furthermore, the thermally optimal thicknesses for positive active material, negative active material, positive current collector, and negative current collector are 180, 34, 21, and 20 um, respectively. After learning about design considerations to reduce thermal issues in lithium-ion battery cells and developing a proper tool for further studies, the focus was set on the flow behavior surrounding a cylindrical battery cell in an air-based cooling system. The cooling system under consideration is a wall-bounded cross-flow heat exchanger, the most common air-based cooling system for battery applications. Despite the importance of the cooling system in battery safety, few studies have been conducted to investigate the thermo-flow characteristics of wall-bounded cross-flow heat exchangers. Hence, in the battery research field, it is common to estimate the performance of wall-bounded cross-flow heat exchangers using the thermal characteristics of free cross-flow heat exchangers due to their geometrical similarities. In Paper B, this assumption is scrutinized by comparing the thermo-fluid characteristics of free and wall-bounded cross-flow heat exchangers. According to the results, flow through both heat exchangers shows almost similar thermo-fluid behavior in areas sufficiently far from the bounding walls. A turbulence model study suggests that the k-kl-omega transition model is a time-efficient and reliable turbulence model for capturing thermo-fluid characteristics in such heat exchangers. Moreover, it is observed that the two different heat exchangers have an almost identical area-averaged heat transfer rate despite the local changes in Nusselt number along the height of cells. This finding shows that it is possible to do two-dimensional simulations for applications that only require an area-averaged heat transfer rate on the battery cells. The findings in Paper A and Paper B may be used to investigate the cooling performance of a battery thermal management system with a practical design. Hence, in Paper C, a comprehensive yet simplified model is developed that can be used to study the thermal field of lithium battery cells in a large-scale air-based battery thermal management system. The model consists of the CFD model derived in Paper B, which predicts the flow behavior around cells in the inner region of the battery package, and the analytical model described in Paper A, which determines the thermal field within the battery cells. The area-averaged heat transfer coefficient interconnects the models, and a system of equations is employed to estimate the row-to-row variation of the thermal field. The model is employed to assess the effect of transverse and longitudinal pitch ratios on the thermal performance of an air-based battery thermal management system used in a hybrid electric vehicle.