About the project
Effective thermal management of lithium-based battery systems is important for optimising cell efficiency, reducing cell degradation and preventing catastrophic failure. Cooling methods need to have a low parasitic energy draw and be controllable to maintain the battery in a defined temperature window.
At an individual cell level, the temperature can be readily controlled with convective flow (either air or liquid coolant). At a pack level, this becomes more challenging without having a thermal gradient between cells or a high volume/mass system with inter-cell cooling elements. A possible solution to this is the implementation of tab cooling, where the electrical contact tabs are cooled rather than the full outer surface of each cell.
This project aims to investigate the use of thermoelectric materials for smart tab-cooling of battery cells. The use of thermoelectric materials would also open the possibility of having an in-built temperature moderation process, where the higher the cell current (which increases thermal output) the higher the cooling effect from the thermoelectric material. In other words, the operation of the battery and its cooling are linked without the requirement of additional temperature sensors.
To validate the reliability and effectiveness of the proposed thermal management system for lithium-ion batteries we will compare our experimental results with model predictions using COMSOL to assess how well this proposed approach aligns with the real-world performance of the lithium-ion battery cell.
The successful candidate will be affiliated to both the Energy Technology Research Group within the Mechanical Engineering Department and the School of Chemistry at University of Southampton. Training will be provided at the beginning of the project to help the student start these investigations
