Heat dissipation behavior of the nickel/metal hydride battery

This work employs a two-dimensional transient thermal model to analyze the effect of attaching cold plates into nickel/metal hydride batteries for its heat dissipation. The influences of configuration parameters and operation conditions on the thermal performance of cold plates are also explored. Am ong the six kinds of chosen core configurations, wavy fin (17.8-3/8w) shows superior heat-removal performance. Since cold plates with lower thermal co nductivity reduce the heat dissipation. materials with higher thermal condu ctivity were selected for the thermal management of nickel/metal hydride ba tteries. The heat dissipated away from the top and bottom surfaces by force d convection constitutes only a very small portion of the heat generated by batteries. The average temperature of a battery is primarily dominated by the cooling performance of cold plates on both sides of a battery, which ca n markedly lower the temperature. Finally the average surface temperature d uring charging of a packed module without cold plates could reach about 44 degrees C, whereas with cold plates the temperature decreased to 27 degrees C. Furthermore, during discharging, the temperatures of modules with and w ithout cold plates were about 24 and 26 degrees C, respectively. (C) 2000 T he Electrochemical Society. S0013-4651(99)07-024-X. All rights reserved.