Experimental Investigation of Hydrogel-Based Passive Cooling for Battery Thermal Management in EV Applications

The growing adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) has necessitated the efficient and energy-saving battery thermal management systems (BTMS) in the market. The operation of lithium-ion batteries creates a lot of heat, and prolonged exposure leads to performance degradation and raises a safety risk. Although active cooling techniques work, they take additional energy and decrease driving distance. This work investigates the performance of a passive cooling technique based on hydrogel layers for 12V prismatic LiFePO₄ batteries. A test rig was built to simulate and measure two scenarios: air-cooled and hydrogels to air-cooled. The hydrogel-based system was shown to bring down the maximum temperature of the battery to 30.0°C versus a temperature of 35.8°C observed in the absence of hydrogel, suggesting a better thermal regulation without any additional power consumption.