Passive Thermal Management of Battery Packs Using Agricultural-Waste-Derived Carbon-Supported Bio-Based Phase Change Materials: A Reduced-Order Design-Space Study
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54536/ajise.v5i3.8811Keywords:
Agricultural Waste, Battery Thermal Management, Latent Beat Accessibility, Phase Change Material, Reduced-Order Thermal ModelAbstract
The effectiveness of passive phase change material (PCM) buffering depends on whether heat can enter the latent reservoir throughout the duty time. PCM buffering can lower short-duration battery temperature rise without continuous auxiliary power. This study reframes an agricultural-waste-supported bio-based PCM concept as a reduced-order design-space analysis rather than an experimentally validated material ranking. A twelve-cell equivalent battery node is coupled to a PCM buffer through an effective conductance. The matrix is anchored to an experimentally characterized lauric-acid/stearic-acid eutectic 189.5 kJ kg−1 melting enthalpy; 39.29 °C melting peak), while an 80 wt% active-PCM composite represents agricultural-residue carbon support. Conductance is treated as a design variable rather than a feedstock-specific measured property. Under a prescribed high thermal duty of 32 W for 1200 s at 25 °C, the bare module reaches 61.07 °C, whereas lower- and higher-coupling composite cases reach 55.99 °C and 52.24 °C, corresponding to temperature-rise reductions of 14.1% and 24.5%. The higher-coupling case nevertheless accesses only 11.7% of its nominal latent reservoir. Sensitivity analysis and a conductance–latent-heat design map show that final temperature is substantially more sensitive to thermal coupling than to ±20% changes in nominal latent heat in this regime. The methodological novelty is the combined use of a latent-utilization ratio, a dimensionless thermal-access number, and a two-parameter design map to distinguish nominal latent storage from thermally accessible storage. The framework identifies when carbon-supported PCM can improve finite-duty buffering and defines the measurements required before practical battery validation.
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