Optimization of the passive thermal control system of a lithium-ion battery with heat pipes embedded in an aluminum plate

In the design and operation of batteries, effective heat transfer and protection against high operation temperatures are significant issues affecting the lifetime of the battery. This is particularly the case for batteries intended for hybrid machines, where the peak power and current requirements are high. This paper introduces a structure of the thermal protection system for the high-power lithium-ion batteries to be applied to hybrid machines and a methodology for their optimization. The proposed structure is based on the use of metal plates and heat pipes, providing an opportunity to decrease the nonuniform temperature distribution in pouch-type cells. The efficiency of the proposed thermal control system is verified by modeling in Comsol Multiphysics, which is connected to MATLAB for the optimization of the placement and number of heat pipes. Multidimensional unconstrained nonlinear minimization is applied during the optimization in MATLAB.