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ISSN Online: 2377-424X

ISBN Print: 978-1-56700-474-8

ISBN Online: 978-1-56700-473-1

International Heat Transfer Conference 16
August, 10-15, 2018, Beijing, China

HEAT TRANSFER MODELLING OF A SUPERCAPACITOR STACK

Get access (open in a dialog) DOI: 10.1615/IHTC16.ctm.022832
pages 3911-3918

Abstract

Supercapacitors are novel energy storage devices widely used in urban transport and telecommunication systems. The high charge and discharge currents in such applications lead to significant heat generation, which has a negative impact on the life and reliability of supercapacitors. Therefore, thermal management becomes one of the key considerations in supercapacitor stack design process. In this paper, a transverse air flow cooling strategy for supercapacitors is proposed and examined numerically using a two-dimensional transient computational model. Mesh grids with inflation layers were found to be able to better capture the flow structures close to the wall boundary layers, and high resolution discretisation scheme showed a higher order of accuracy comparing to 1st order upwind discretisation scheme. In terms of flow structure, it was observed that the bulk of flow propagates towards the outlet in a very narrow region. Vortices were observed in between individual supercapacitors, which increased the cooling performance. Parametric studies by varying the inlet velocity and rest time periods were conducted and the resulting heat transfer behaviours were analysed. It was observed that increases in inlet velocity and rest time improved the cooling efficiency by showing a lower maximum temperature within the system.