Melting numerical simulation of hydrated salt phase change material in thermal management of cylindrical battery cells using enthalpy-porosity model

Battery thermal management using different cooling techniques is rapidly growing. Understanding the proper cooling and melting process when phase change materials (PCM) are used is of prime importance in this area. Hence, a transient thermal-fluid and melting process of hydrated salt PCM enclosed in a battery module with six cylindrical cells is numerically investigated to understand the melting process of the PCM. Four structural models S1, S2, S3, and S4 are constructed for the present numerical simulation. The battery cell wall is kept at a constant temperature of 35℃, while the rectangular enclosure walls are assumed to be insulated. A finite volume scheme-based CFD (computational fluid dynamics) software is used to simulate the melting process of hydrated salt PCM. In order to capture the phase change phenomenon from solid to liquid, an enthalpy-porosity equation is solved. The temporal temperature distribution, liquid fraction, velocity and enthalpy are analyzed. The results obtained by the numerical computation suggest that the battery cell arrangement used in S1 and S2 model at the initial time step gives better space for temperature distribution and liquid fraction up to the time step of 420 s, while S3 and S4 model after a time interval of 420 s provide better scope for temperature distribution and complete melting of hydrated PCM.