Investigation of lithium-ion batteries performance in terms of thermal conditions

Renewable energy systems in their different configurations are an excellent solution to overcome the diminishing energy as well as the negative footprint of fossil fuel. That is why huge effort has been dedicated for the development of such systems both in terms of sources and management. Having said that, the main drawback of renewable resources is their intermittent aspect. Indeed, these sources depend on natural phenomena that cannot be predicted. In other words, the required output of renewable energy systems is not always guaranteed. From here it is inescapable to couple these sources with energy storage systems. There are many types of energy storage systems, and each has its characteristics in terms of advantages and disadvantages. Batteries are an electrochemical storage system offering many advantages, such as their availability. There exist many types of batteries, among then Lithium-Ion batteries. These types of batteries provide many advantages such as having high energy density, which is an essential requirement to ensure high operational time for many electronic systems such as cell phones. Having said that, in order to operate efficiently Lithium-Ion batteries present some thermal constraints. Indeed, high temperature reduces the efficiency of these batteries. In fact, the use of these systems in hot environments requires an appropriate cooling system. In this frame the present study investigates the performance of Lithium-Ion batteries within a hot environment. A numerical model was developed allowing the simulation of a pack of several batteries for different conditions. Moreover, a cooling design was proposed and studied. The numerical results showed the effect of the proposed cooling system on the temperature distribution as well as on the batteries’ voltage. For instance, without cooling, the minimum temperature at t equals 0.5h was 299, whereas it was 293.6 when cooling was applied. Moreover, the maximum temperature decreased from 300.5 K to 296 K.