Performance Assessment of Battery Thermal Management Systems for Rack‐Mount Prismatic LiFePO4 Battery Packs in Photovoltaic Energy Storage Systems With 4E Approach
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENERGY RESEARCH, cilt.2026, sa.1, ss.1-20, 2026 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 2026 Sayı: 1
- Basım Tarihi: 2026
- Doi Numarası: 10.1155/er/6079738
- Dergi Adı: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENERGY RESEARCH
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Academic Search Ultimate (EBSCO), Natural Science Collection (ProQuest), Earth, Atmospheric, & Aquatic Science Collection (ProQuest), Engineering Source (EBSCO), Scopus, Materials Science & Engineering Collection (ProQuest), Technology Collection (ProQuest), Aerospace Database, Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Compendex, Environment Index, INSPEC, Directory of Open Access Journals
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.1-20
- Gazi Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
Efficient thermal management is essential for ensuring the safety, performance and lifetime of lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) battery packs used in photovoltaic battery energy storage systems (PV–BESS). In this study, a three-dimensional transient computational fluid dynamic (CFD) model is developed to evaluate the Energy, Exergy, Economic, and Environmental (4E) performance of a rack-mount prismatic LiFePO4 battery pack under different battery thermal management system (BTMS) configurations and C-rate conditions. Unlike conventional studies that mainly focus on thermal behaviour, the proposed framework directly links CFD-based thermal and hydraulic outputs, including maximum temperature, average temperature, temperature difference and pressure drop, with energy–exergy performance, techno-economic indicators, and environmental impact metrics. Four cooling strategies are comparatively investigated: air cooling (AC), aluminium block cooling (AB), flow-channel liquid cooling (FC) and hybrid aluminium-block plus flow-channel cooling (AB + FC). The numerical results show that the hybrid AB + FC configuration provides the best overall thermal performance. At 1.5 C-rate, the AB + FC system limits the maximum battery temperature to ~306 K and reduces the temperature difference to 1.69 K, resulting in improved temperature uniformity and effective hot spot suppression. In contrast, the AC and FC configurations reach peak temperatures ~312–313 K, corresponding to about 6–7 K above the AB + FC configuration. 4E analysis further validated the superior overall performance of the AB + FC design, with energy and exergy efficiencies of 68.8% and 36.2%, respectively. It also achieved the lowest levelised cooling cost (LCOC) at $1.5/MWh and the lowest CO2 emission intensity at 45.0 kg CO2/MWh. These findings demonstrate that the proposed hybrid BTMS improves thermal safety, temperature homogeneity, hydraulic performance, thermodynamic efficiency, cost-effectiveness and environmental sustainability and is therefore a promising cooling solution for rack-mounted prismatic LiFePO4 battery packs in PV–BESS applications.