Refrigerant cycle with PCM cold storage for battery cooling during fast charging

Authors

A. Steiner, A. Mladek, L. Winder - VIRTUAL VEHICLE Research GmbH, R. Sonnenberger, R. Salazar-Alvear - Valeo Klimasysteme GmbH

Summary

With the successful introduction of electric vehicles on the market, the upcoming challenges are to achieve user friendliness, affordability and to build-up the necessary charging infrastructure. In order to ensure short charging times – especially for longer trips - high power charging (HPC) stations with charging powers between 100 and 350 kW are introduced. During high power charging a significant amount of heat is generated in the traction battery. This requires a sophisticated thermal management system for battery cooling to avoid an overheating of battery cells. In the present paper a refrigerant cycle with integrated cold storage containing a phase change material (PCM) including a related control strategy is presented and discussed. It enables an increase of the available power for battery cooling during fast charging. The results show an increase of 22% of the average battery cooling power compared to a state-of-the-art refrigerant cycle using the same compressor and heat exchangers.