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Powering Resilience: Advanced Thermal Management for Next-Generation Battery Systems
Collaborator
SIIX-ORIENT is a joint venture between SIIX, a global Electronic Manufacturing Services provider, and Orient Technology, a leading provider for energy storage solutions, headquartered in Singapore. It develops cost-effective modular-scalable Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS). These systems offer flexible deployment to meet diverse customers’ capacity requirements, from Solar PV storage to critical building backup power.
SIIX-ORIENT is a joint venture between SIIX, a global Electronic Manufacturing Services provider, and Orient Technology, a leading provider for energy storage solutions, headquartered in Singapore. It develops cost-effective modular-scalable Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS). These systems offer flexible deployment to meet diverse customers’ capacity requirements, from Solar PV storage to critical building backup power.
Challenges
The Battery Thermal Management System (BTMS) is one of the most critical components of a BESS, ensuring batteries operate within their optimum temperature range to maximise safety and longevity. While developing the BTMS is a key focus for SIIX-ORIENT’s design team, they encountered a challenge in physically testing full-scale prototypes across the exhaustive range of required environmental and design conditions.
The Battery Thermal Management System (BTMS) is one of the most critical components of a BESS, ensuring batteries operate within their optimum temperature range to maximise safety and longevity. While developing the BTMS is a key focus for SIIX-ORIENT’s design team, they encountered a challenge in physically testing full-scale prototypes across the exhaustive range of required environmental and design conditions.
Solution
Recognising the opportunity to accelerate their BESS development by using simulation, SIIX-ORIENT initiated a research collaboration with A*STAR’s Institute of High-Performance Computing (A*STAR IHPC) and A*STAR Institute of Materials Research Engineering (A*STAR IMRE). This partnership, formed under the òòò½ÍøBattery Pack Programme, aimed to establish a robust virtual testing capability.
While computational modelling is widely used in many industry, battery pack simulation is uniquely complex, requiring the integration of multiple “length scales”. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) workflow implemented by A*STAR IHPC enables a tight coupling between the electrical behaviour of the individual cells and its thermal response to provide high fidelity thermal solutions at the full pack level. This allows the team to vary boundary conditions, such as the ambient temperature, coolant flow rates, state of charge and power output to predict BESS performance across all required design cases.
The simulation work was combined with experimental testing performed by A*STAR IMRE and SIIX-ORIENT. Leveraging A*STAR Battery Test Facility, A*STAR IMRE conducted cell cycling and thermal performance using Accelerating Rate Colorimetry (ARC). Simultaneously, SIIX-ORIENT performed further cell aging and pack level thermal testing. These empirical results provided deeper insight into pack design and served as critical data points to refine and validate the accuracy of the simulation models, ensuring a highly reliable development process.
Fig 1. Thermal simulation to determine cell temperatures in a typical module of battery cells.
Fig 2. Internal temperatures within the battery storage enclosure under worst case conditions.
Fig 3. SIIX-ORIENT and A*STAR team preparing for an ARC test at the A*STAR Battery Test Facility
[From left to right: (SIIX-ORIENT) Andy Wong, (A*STAR IHPC) Dr Xing Xiuqing, Dr. Lin Jing, Dr Zhang Baili,
(A*STAR IMRE) Dr Wang Wanwan
Key Results
- Safety / De-risking: Simulation allowed the team to "test the untestable" including extreme failure events such as cooling system breakdowns.
- Design Confidence: By verifying effective control measures virtually, SIIX-ORIENT gained the data-driven confidence that their final design is resilient, reliable, and safe under all operational requirements.
- Knowledge Transfer: Beyond the technical output, the partnership provided SIIX-ORIENT’s engineering team with deep insights into battery analytics, cell safety and the latest modelling technologies.
Mr Yang Zhenrong, Project Manager of SIIX-OREINT concluded, “Working with the battery research team at A*STAR has allowed us access to the latest modelling technologies in thermal analysis and battery analytics and accelerate our product development schedule. We have also been able to validate safe operating requirements for our supplier’s battery cells by performing ARC (Accelerated Rate Calorimetry) at the A*STAR Battery Test Facility. The regular meetings with A*STAR experts have been hugely stimulating and helped some of our young engineers appreciate the benefits of using simulation. This has provided extra insight into product performance, well in advance of results from physical prototypes.”
Significant Progress
The virtual testing solution developed in SGBP2 allowed the team to explore operating conditions that would have been difficult to test. The results showed that even under direct sunlight, when casing temperature can reach upwards of 70 °C, the temperature of the internal components could be kept below critical temperatures in the event of a coolant failure. The insights provided from the simulation studies helped SIIX-ORIENT achieve a high level of confidence in their BTMS.
The virtual testing solution developed in SGBP2 allowed the team to explore operating conditions that would have been difficult to test. The results showed that even under direct sunlight, when casing temperature can reach upwards of 70 °C, the temperature of the internal components could be kept below critical temperatures in the event of a coolant failure. The insights provided from the simulation studies helped SIIX-ORIENT achieve a high level of confidence in their BTMS.
About the òòò½ÍøBattery Pack Programme (SGBP2)
Supported by A*STAR under its MTC IAF-PP grant award, SGBP2 is a collaboration between NTU, A*STAR, NUS and SUTD. It seeks to elevate Singapore’s capabilities in battery pack design performance and safety through the creation of a national platform for rapid design, prototyping and validation of next generation battery packs.
Supported by A*STAR under its MTC IAF-PP grant award, SGBP2 is a collaboration between NTU, A*STAR, NUS and SUTD. It seeks to elevate Singapore’s capabilities in battery pack design performance and safety through the creation of a national platform for rapid design, prototyping and validation of next generation battery packs.
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