A Comparative Life Cycle Analysis of an Active and a Passive Battery Thermal Management System for an Electric Vehicle: A Cold Plate and a Loop Heat Pipe

This study extends beyond conventional Battery Thermal Management System (BTMS) research by conducting a Life Cycle Analysis comparing the environmental impacts of two technologies: a traditional active cold plate system and an innovative passive Loop Heat Pipe (LHP) system. While active cold plate BTMS requires continuous energy input during operation and charging, leading to significant energy consumption and emissions, the passive LHP BTMS operates without external power or moving parts, substantially reducing the climate change impact. This analysis considered two materials for LHP construction: copper and stainless steel. The results demonstrated that the LHP design achieved a 9.9 kg reduction in overall BTMS mass compared to the cold plate system. The implementation of stainless steel effectively addressed the high resource consumption associated with copper while reducing environmental impact by over 50% across most impact categories, compared to the cold plate BTMS. The passive operation of the LHP system leads to substantially lower energy usage and emissions during the use phase compared to the active cold plate. These findings highlight the potential of passive LHP technology to enhance the environmental sustainability of Battery Thermal Management Systems while maintaining effective thermal performance.