Electric vehicles (EVs) powered by lithium batteries, which are a promising type of green transportation, have attracted much attention in recent years. In this study, a thermoelectric generator (TEG) coupled with forced convection (F-C) was designed as an effective and feasible cooling system for a battery thermal management system. A comparison of natural convection cooling, F-C cooling, and TEG cooling reveals that the TEG is the best cooling system. Specifically, this system can decrease the temperature by 16.44% at the discharge rate of 3C. The coupled TEG and F-C cooling system can significantly control temperature at a relatively high discharge rate. This system not only can decrease the temperature of the battery module promptly but also can reduce the energy consumption compared with the two other TEG-based cooling systems. These results are expected to supply an effective basis of the design and optimization of battery thermal management systems to improve the reliability and safety performance of EVs.

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The temperature has to be controlled adequately to maintain the electric vehicles (EVs) within a safety range. Using paraffin as the heat dissipation source to control the temperature rise is developed. And the expanded graphite (EG) is applied to improve the thermal conductivity. In this study, the paraffin and EG composite phase change material (PCM) was prepared and characterized. And then, the composite PCM have been applied in the 42110 LiFePO 4 battery module (48 V/10 Ah) for experimental research. Different discharge rate and pulse experiments were carried out at various working conditions, including room temperature (25°C), high temperature (35°C), and low temperature (−20°C). Furthermore, in order to obtain the practical loading test data, a battery pack with the similar specifications by 2S * 2P with PCM-based modules were installed in the EVs for various practical road experiments including the flat ground, 5°, 10°, and 20°slope. Testing results indicated that the PCM cooling system can control the peak temperature under 42°C and balance the maximum temperature difference within 5°C. Even in extreme high-discharge pulse current process, peak temperature can be controlled within 50°C. The aforementioned results exhibit that PCM cooling in battery thermal management has promising advantages over traditional air cooling.