Numerical simulation for comparison of cold plate cooling and HFE-7000 immersion cooling in lithium-ion battery thermal management

In this work, fluorinated liquids can be used as a new immersion coolant for effective battery thermal management (BTM) because of their insulating and non-flammable inert characteristics. In this research, the liquid chosen for immersion cooling is HFE-7000, characterized by a boiling point of 34 °C. The analysis of bubble kinetics is employed to investigate the heat transfer mechanism in two-phase immersion cooling by examining the behavior of bubbles during the boiling process. The square ternary Li-ion batteries are subjected under loads of 2C and 3C cooled by immersion cooling and a mini-channel cold plate as a comparison. It turns out that immersion liquid cooling modules offer superior thermal performance. Under constant current (CC), the peak temperature is reduced by 4.89 °C and 9.31 °C compared with the mini-channel cold plate cooling (CPC). Under dynamic load conditions, the maximum temperature rise of the battery is reduced by 29.89 % and 43.89 % compared to CPC. As a passive heat dissipation method, two-phase immersion cooling reduces the design requirements for active control. Also, it delivers an efficient battery thermal management system (BTMS) designed for upcoming electric vehicles (EVs).