Thermal management for a tube–shell Li-ion battery pack using water evaporation coupled with forced air cooling

A novel battery thermal management system (BTMS) based on water evaporation (WE) and air-cooling (AC) for a tube–shell Li-ion battery (LIB) pack is designed. A sodium alginate (SA) film with a higher water content above 99% is fortified by adding polyethylene (PE) fibers. The air flow and PE-fiber composite sodium alginate (PECSA) film are both used to control the temperature of the battery pack. Results show that the maximum temperature of the battery pack can be controlled below 32 °C, when WE coupled with AC is used at a discharge rate of 1.8C within a discharge time of 1000 s. This method yields the highest performance of thermal management. The experimental results validate the numerical data, confirming that the design of WE combined with AC helps prevent overheating of a battery pack. This work also provides an automatic refilling system to solve the dehydration problem of the PECSA film.