Summary To achieve safe, long lifetime, and high‐performance lithium‐ion batteries, a battery thermal management system (BTMS) is indispensable. This is especially required for enabling fast charging‐discharging and in aggressive operating conditions. In this research, a new type of battery cooling system based on thermal silica plates has been designed for prismatic lithium‐ion batteries. Experimental and simulations are combined to investigate the cooling capability of the BTMS associated to different number of cooling channels, flow rates, and flow directions while at different discharge C‐rates. Results show that the maximum temperature reached within the battery decreases as the amount of thermal silica plates and liquid channels increases. The flow direction had no significant influence on the cooling capability. While the performance obviously improves with the increase in inlet flow rate, after a certain threshold, the gain reduces strongly so that it does not anymore justify the higher energy cost. Discharged at 3 C‐rate, an inlet flow rate of 0.1 m/s was sufficient to efficiently cool down the system; discharged at 5 C‐rate, the optimum inlet flow rate was 0.25 m/s. Simulations could accurately reproduce experimental results, allowing for an efficient design of the liquid‐cooled BTMS.

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Summary To overcome the significant amounts of heat generated by large‐capacity battery modules under high‐temperature and rapid‐discharge conditions, a new liquid cooling strategy based on thermal silica plates was designed and developed. The superior thermal conductivity of the thermal silica plate combined with the excellent cooling effect of water led to a feasible and effective composite liquid cooling system during long cycle testing. The experimental results showed that the addition of thermal silica plates can greatly improve the cooling capacity that can allow the maximum temperature difference to be controlled at 6.1°C and reduce the maximum temperature of the battery module by 11.3°C, but still outside the optimum operating temperature range. The water flow significantly enhanced the cooling performance/stability, and slight temperature fluctuations were observed during cycling. The cooling performance obviously improved as the flow rate rose. When the velocity reached a critical value, further increase in water flow rate induced a slight influence on the cooling capacity due to the limitation of the materials. The maximum temperature (Tmax) could be reduced to 48.7°C, and temperature difference (∆T) could be maintained within 5°C when the water flow velocity increased to 4 mL/s, which was determined as the best value. The energy consumed by the water pump is only 1.37% of the total energy of the battery module. Overall, these findings should provide novel strategies for the design and optimization of battery thermal management system.

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