Numerical analysis of copper foam-enhanced hybrid battery thermal management systems for lithium-ion batteries: advancing energy density and thermal control

• A hybrid battery cooling system developed using foam in PCM and liquid cooling. • Optimised copper foam layers enhance heat transfer, lowering temperature by 9.68 K. • A transient heat generation model captures real-time battery thermal behaviour. • Proposed design improves energy density by 11% by reducing required cooling plates. • Optimised 4 mm metal foam layer improves heat dissipation with minimal pressure drop. With the growing demand for efficient and safe energy storage solutions, this study explores the effective and optimised integration of copper metal foam in hybrid battery thermal management systems (HBTMS). A novel HBTMS design is proposed, combining cooling plates with enhanced liquid cooling by metal foam layers in copper tubes and phase change material (PCM) cooling improved by copper foam longitudinal fins. Numerical simulations were conducted using a lumped-capacitance thermal model for transient battery heat generation, the enthalpy-porosity method for PCM, Darcy-Brinkman-Forchheimer (DBF), local thermal equilibrium (LTE) and non-equilibrium (LTNE) models for metal foam. Unlike previous studies that address passive and active cooling separately, present investigation uniquely integrates copper foam into both domains by enhancing conduction in the PCM and improving convection in the coolant channels. This integrated approach achieves superior thermal control, improved energy density, and ensures operational safety. The system’s performance under high 5C discharge rates demonstrated a significant reduction of about 9 K in the maximum battery surface temperature compared to pure PCM cooling while maintaining the maximum battery surface temperature difference below 1 K. The study highlights the optimal copper foam layer thickness of 4 mm, balancing improved heat transfer and minimal pressure drop. Furthermore, the incorporation of the metal foam layers reduced the number of required cooling plates, resulting in an 11 % improvement in energy density.