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. Among the six kinds of chosen core configurations, wavy fin (17.8-3/8w) shows superior heat‐removal performance. Since cold plates with lower thermal conductivity reduce the heat dissipation, materials with higher thermal conductivity were selected for the thermal management of nickel/metal hydride batteries. The heat dissipated away from the top and bottom surfaces by forced 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 can markedly lower the temperature. Finally, the average surface temperature during charging of a packed module without cold plates could reach about 44°C, whereas with cold plates the temperature decreased to 27°C. Furthermore, during discharging, the temperatures of modules with and without cold plates were about 24 and 26°C, respectively.