TESLA battery module -- is this a real cooling mechanism?

[batteryGOLD]

Hi there battery fanatics!
I came here to show you a TESLA battery module at detail showing that cooling crazy design!
Is that just a mediocre engineered cooling system, expensive and complex design production? maybe polemic.

Why to have that crazy cooling system at lateral of cells with minimal surface area contact? According some studies, the heat transfer is not good around cells. For similar propose just need fan extractors at battery module case, air circulation will be more efficient than that and very low cost production!

The real cooling will be at top and bottom cell plates. Top and bottom of 18650 is connect inside by a conductor at center of cell and at the end of the roll.
As you know a good electricity conductor is as well a good heat transfer medium.

Soo positive top is connected to center of cell, and heat shout be extracted from there by the conductor and bottom as well, with plannar liquid circulation top and bottom plates. similar to "tab cooling" concept
Just saying..

Anyway, here are the pictures

 

[lnanek]

They had a lot of issues of wet batteries, although partially due to the AC placement. Still heating and cooling can cause condensation. Maybe so much junk between the cells instead of the top and bottom helps there? Or maybe the car design just didn't have space for more top and bottom equipment, so they went with worse option that didn't add height.

 

[amberwolf]

Is that a cooling system, or is it a heating system? (to increase performance)

 

[liveforphysics]

I think that they know its worse thermally, volumetrically, and cost to mfg. They aren't stupid, though and have some excellent reasons for doing it.

I think that it buys them propagation resistance between those banks in thermal runaway and that's why they do cool there rather than the bottom. My personal favorite method for stopping thermal runaway propagation using endothermic fillers in potting materials, but these add a few pounds of weight over what they did. Cooling the bottom also makes the pack slightly thicker by more than the thickness of the liquid (or blown forced air just through the cold plate, but this is loud and needs filters to be replaced when clogged or it stops working) cold plate alone because the cooling plate the cells are on needs to be insulated from ambient air temps as they are well coupled thermally to the cell (becomes an impractical amount of heater kW to heat pack on a cold day without insulation).

I see the smart aspects and advantages to what they are doing, but personally, I also would love to see the liquid all in a single lower cold plate, with the needed insulation layer before the lower pack armor skin, but this may add another >+15-20mm to pack thickness, which has significant negative user impacts in either floor height or ground clearance. I'm happy with the low floor height and just enough ground clearance they designed in with the pack design.

For the various advantages the design has, the car is a better user experience, and huge respect to Tesla and the precision of the battery component makers for making a tough to build design possible to do in high volume mfg processes.

 

[batteryGOLD]

a lot of science!

Sure Tesla engineers aren't stupids! They just need to do fast solutions to market & Tesla has the most massive acceleration car! That pays all! Tesla still rules.
15-20mm at top and bottom of car battery for cells cooling/heating planar liquid circulation plates is insignificant compared to car dimensions!

The best thermal cell runway protection is a thermal conductive wrap fire proof at each cell. just sayin..

Challenge: the best video vlog for a fire starter at battery! Prepare any battery and make it go on fire . overcharge, shortcircuit, prefuration,twist. any methood available - vlog it and post. Wins a price for best fire works video.