The key hurdles to achieving wide consumer acceptance of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) are weather-dependent drive range, higher cost, and limited battery life. These translate into a strong need to reduce a significant energy drain and resulting drive range loss due to auxiliary electrical loads the predominant of which is the cabin thermal management load. Studies have shown that thermal subsystem loads can reduce the drive range by as much as 45% under ambient temperatures below −10 °C. Often, cabin heating relies purely on positive temperature coefficient (PTC) resistive heating, contributing to a significant range loss. Reducing this range loss may improve consumer acceptance of BEVs. The authors present a unified thermal management system (UTEMPRA) that satisfies diverse thermal and design needs of the auxiliary loads in BEVs. Demonstrated on a 2015 Fiat 500e BEV, this system integrates a semi-hermetic refrigeration loop with a coolant network and serves three functions: (1) heating and/or cooling vehicle traction components (battery, power electronics, and motor) (2) heating and cooling of the cabin, and (3) waste energy harvesting and re-use. The modes of operation allow a heat pump and air conditioning system to function without reversing the refrigeration cycle to improve thermal efficiency. The refrigeration loop consists of an electric compressor, a thermal expansion valve, a coolant-cooled condenser, and a chiller, the latter two exchanging heat with hot and cold coolant streams that may be directed to various components of the thermal system. The coolant-based heat distribution is adaptable and saves significant amounts of refrigerant per vehicle. Also, a coolant-based system reduces refrigerant emissions by requiring fewer refrigerant pipe joints. The authors present bench-level test data and simulation analysis and describe a preliminary control scheme for this system.

Only recently, experimental data is available in open literature in condensation of various refrigerants in small hydraulic diameter microchannels. The phenomenon of two-phase flow and heat transfer mechanism in small diameter microchannels (< 1 mm) may be different than that in conventional tube sizes due to increasing dominance of several influencing parameters like surface tension, viscosity etc. This paper presents an on-going experimental study of condensation heat transfer and pressure drop of refrigerant R134a is a single high aspect ratio rectangular microchannel of hydraulic diameter 0.7 mm and aspect ratio 7:1. This data will help explore the condensation phenomenon in microchannels that is necessary in the design and development of small-scale heat exchangers and other compact cooling systems. The inlet vapor qualities between 20% and 80% and mass fluxes of 130 and 200 kg/m2s have been studied at present. The microchannel outlet conditions are maintained at close to thermodynamic saturated liquid state through a careful experimental procedure. A unique process for fabrication of the microchannel involving milling and electroplating steps has been adopted to maintain the channel geometry close to design values. Measurement instruments are well-calibrated to ensure low system energy balance error, uncertainty and good repeatability of test data. The trends of data recorded are comparable to that found in recent literature on similar dimension tubes.

The present paper reports on a study of the HVAC energy usage for an EREV (extended range electric vehicle) implementation of a localized cooling/heating system. Components in the localized system use thermoelectric (TE) devices to target the occupant's chest, face, lap and foot areas. A novel contact TE seat was integrated into the system. Human subject comfort rides and a thermal manikin in the tunnel were used to establish equivalent comfort for the baseline and localized system. The tunnel test results indicate that, with the localized system, HVAC energy savings of 37% are achieved for cooling conditions (ambient conditions greater than 10 °C) and 38% for heating conditions (ambient conditions less than 10 °C), respectively based on an annualized ambient and vehicle occupancy weighted method. The driving range extension for an electric vehicle was also estimated based on the HVAC energy saving.

Three different refrigerants, R134a, R245fa and HFE7100 were analyzed as working fluids for two-phase cooling of high heat flux electronics in a 0.7 mm hydraulic diameter 190 mm long high aspect ratio minichannel and in a newly developed micro-groove surface condenser. The latter comprised of a micro-groove surface with rectangular grooves of 84 μm in hydraulic diameter with an aspect ratio of 10.6 and headers that directed the refrigerant flow into the grooves. It was concluded that in the minichannel R245fa provides higher heat transfer coefficients compared to R134a with a significantly higher pressure drop. The saturation temperature drop in the same channel created a significant temperature drop for HFE7100 that make the application of such minichannels for cross-flow condensers with this fluid unpractical. The microgroove surface condenser provided significantly higher heat transfer coefficients compared to the minichannel condenser. The pressure drop in the micro-groove surface condenser was extremely low and imposed just 1C temperature drop on HFE7100 at it highest heat flux. The mass flux of refrigerant in the micro-groove surface condenser is significantly lower compared to conventional mini and microchannel condensers. In its current configuration, the microgroove surface condenser benefits from the possibility of an increase in mass flux resulting in a significant increase in heat transfer coefficient and just a moderate increase in pressure drop.

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