Liquid-Based Battery Temperature Control of Electric Buses

Abstract

Previous research identified that battery temperature control is critical to the safety, lifetime, and performance of electric vehicles. In this paper, the liquid-based battery temperature control of electric buses is investigated subject to heat transfer behavior and control strategy. Therefore, a new transient calculation method is proposed to simulate the thermal behavior of a coolant-cooled battery system. The method is based on the system identification technique and combines the advantage of low computational effort and high accuracy. In detail, four transfer functions are extracted by a thermo-hydraulic 3D simulation model comprising 12 prismatic lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC) cells, housing, arrestors, and a cooling plate. The transfer functions describe the relationship between heat generation, cell temperature, and coolant temperature. A vehicle model calculates the power consumption of an electric bus and thus provides the input for the transient calculation. Furthermore, a cell temperature control strategy is developed with respect to the constraints of a refrigerant-based battery cooling unit. The data obtained from the simulation demonstrate the high thermal inertia of the system and suggest sufficient control of the battery temperature using a quasi-stationary cooling strategy. Thereby, the study reveals a crucial design input for battery cooling systems in terms of heat transfer behavior and control strategy.