Investigation on the thermal performance of phase change material/porous medium-based battery thermal management in pore scale

With the latent heat, the phase change material (PCM) is widely used in battery thermal management (BTM) to control the temperature. In this paper, the porous medium is employed to enhance the heat transfer of PCM. The lattice Boltzmann model for PCM/porous medium in pore scale is considered, where the mesh system with porous medium (fixed point) is generated by quartet structure generation set (QSGS) method. The effects of the Rayleigh number and porosity on the heat transfer process in BTM are investigated. The results show that decreasing the porosity will accelerate the melting rate. When the porosities are 0.9, 0.8, 0.7, and 0.6, the total melting times are decreased by 23.7%, 43.3%, 58.0%, and 75.4%, compared with pure PCM. The heat is transferred through the high-conductivity framework. The natural convection in the porous medium is weak, and the conduction is the dominated heat transfer. As a result, the area of solid-liquid interface will be increased, and the heat-transferred rate is accelerated. However, when the Rayleigh number is raised to 10(5), applying the porous medium with porosity of 0.9 will increase the total melting time, resulted from the stronger natural convection of PCM. The present study is helpful for design of PCM/porous medium-based BTM.