Thermal modelling and heat management of supercapacitor modulus

Supercapacitors, which are considered as one of the most useful electrochemical storage devices, have a variety of applications in different industrial and transport sectors. Their more recent and important application is to store energy produced by renewable energy sources to enable efficient use of the stored energy when required. Due to the quick and repeating nature of charge and discharge in these devices, they are a major source of heat generation. This generated heat is required to be ventilated from the system, because it may lead to malfunction, aging or even fire. Air is commonly used for heat ventilation in these systems. Given the compact size of supercapacitor stacks, the cooling strategy and cell arrangement has a significan impact on the operation temperature of individual capacitors within the stack. In this study, computational fluid mechanics (CFD) is applied using the commercial package ANSYS to simulate heat transfer and fluid dynamics around a series of supercapacitors in a stack. The heat transfer analysis is carried out and the thermal characteristics of the stack components are represented with different initial conditions and under different scenarios. Four different velocities for cooling air are considered which represent different fan speeds; and four different heat fluxes for supercapacitors are considered, which represent different working loads of the supercapacitors. At each velocity, different heat fluxes are used and the temperatures field is investigated. In addition, for each heat flux value, the inlet velocity of the cooling air has been changed to elaborate on its influence on the cooling process. In this respect, the most appropriate cooling air velocity for each heat flux condition has been identified to pave the way for future studies. Overall, the outcome of this research will be useful to have a clear understanding of the requirements for an efficient and safe cooling strategy for a typical supercapacitor stack, where overheating might lead to expensive and unsafe damage.