A Thermal Investigation on a Commercial Stack of Prismatic Lithium-Ion Batteries

Temperature distribution strongly influences the performance and the life cycles of Lithium-ion batteries-based systems. The capability to forecast the temperature behavior is of crucial importance to correctly tune the Battery Management System (BMS). In this paper, an industrial batteries stack is analyzed, where prismatic lithium-titanate-oxide (LTO) cells are used. First, a 3D computational study is conducted to investigate flow and temperature field when the fans-based air-cooling system is on, showing that the BMS temperature sensing system is largely affected by the position of the thermocouples. Then, a zero-dimension lumped model is built for a fast forecast of the cells' temperature both with fans turn on and off. This model, based on an energy balance differential equation, has been obtained through numerical optimization from the experimental data and does not require any thermal characterization techniques. It can predict with a good agreement the cells' temperature in a quick way.