A battery thermal management system built around a closed loop pulsating heat pipe, fans and capacitors preheated a lithium-ion battery module from minus 30 °C to 0 °C in at most 461 seconds, according to a study in the Journal of Energy Storage. The paper, by Meng Chen and Mingting Wang, presents the thermal management design as a single system for both hot and cold operation and tests it from minus 30 °C to 40 °C ambient temperature.
What the thermal management system combines
The thermal management design addresses two problems that usually get separate hardware: temperature rise at high ambient temperature, which raises the risk of thermal runaway, and loss of performance in the cold. A closed loop pulsating heat pipe moves heat across the battery module, fans cool it in the heat, and capacitors supply the energy for preheating in the cold. A hierarchical control strategy switches between the two modes. The test platform has a battery test unit based on an Arbin BT2000 system, a unit that controls ambient temperature and the battery module with the titanium dioxide based heat pipe system.
| Condition | Reported result |
|---|---|
| Ambient 25 °C to 40 °C, staged fan control | Maximum temperature lower than with natural convection; module temperature difference within 2 °C |
| Ambient minus 30 °C to minus 10 °C, two stage capacitor supply | Smooth change from rapid preheating to precise temperature holding |
| Ambient minus 30 °C | At most 461 s to preheat the battery to 0 °C; module temperature difference within 2.5 °C |
| Continuous variable temperature run | Battery maximum surface temperature rises from minus 18.8 °C to 21.3 °C |
Reading the 461 seconds
A rise of 30 K in 461 s is 0.065 K per second, or about 3.9 K per minute, if the battery starts at the ambient temperature of minus 30 °C (a calculation from the reported figures, since the starting state is not stated in the abstract). In the continuous run, the first 330 s are driven mainly by the primary supercapacitor, which acts as the main heat source and takes the battery rapidly through the low temperature region, before a second stage holds the temperature. The reported surface temperature rise in that run, from minus 18.8 °C to 21.3 °C, is 40.1 K.
The second stage is the point of the thermal management design. The authors state that the staged energy supply gives on-demand preheating and lowers energy use during operation, which would matter in a vehicle where every kilowatt hour spent on heating is range lost.
What the available text does not report
The abstract and highlights give temperature differences and times, but not several figures needed to judge the thermal management system as a product. The cell chemistry, the number of cells and the module capacity are not given in the text read for this analysis. The energy used for preheating, in kilowatt hours or as a share of battery capacity, is not given, so the claim of lower energy use cannot be quantified. The capacitor size, the mass and volume of the system and its cost are not given either.
The hot case needs the same care. The paper opens with the risk of thermal runaway, but the results reported for 25 °C to 40 °C ambient temperature are about temperature rise and uniformity under normal operation. They do not describe an abuse or runaway test, so the results show cooling performance and not runaway prevention. The material available was the abstract, highlights, nomenclature and snippets of the methods and results; the full text sits behind a paywall.
The checks that would settle the case for this thermal management approach are a stated energy cost of preheating per cycle, results from more than one cell format, and a test of a fault condition. For another look at cold weather battery performance, see the analysis of EV range loss in winter, and for temperature as a driver of battery faults, the Volkswagen ID.4 recall over thermal propagation. Source: Chen and Wang, Performance study of a battery thermal management system adapted for wide temperature range conditions, Journal of Energy Storage 183 (2026) 125086.
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