Behr America Forms New Battery Cooling Group
27 July 2009
Behr America has formed a Battery Cooling Group at its headquarters in Troy to meet the increasing demand for thermal-management technology.
The new group, managed by Fred Pumper, manager, Thermal Solutions and Validation Test, Behr America, will focus on growing the company’s battery cooling activities as well as support Behr’s Group in Stuttgart, Germany.
We have established a Battery Group at our Behr America headquarters to support our customers, both our OEM customers with their vehicle integration and direct battery pack integration of thermal systems as well, for battery suppliers. This group will build on four years of active development already completed by our Battery Cooling Division lead by Dr. Thomas Heckenberger, director of advanced development in Behr's Stuttgart, Germany technical center.
—John Tepas, director/chief engineer, Behr America
Behr has experience in three different technical solutions for battery cooling: cooled air; refrigerant, and secondary loop solutions.
All three approaches require the integration of battery cooling into the air-conditioning circuit. Vehicle architecture and other technical requirements determine which solution best fits a specific vehicle platform. Behr says that its system integration expertise gives the company a unique technological advantage in providing solutions for battery thermal management.
In the US market, Behr supplies a full thermal management system for GM’s Lambda platform vehicles as well as programs still in development.
Could the batteries cooling system capture enough heat to keep the vehicle cabin warm in cold weather areas?
If so, cold weather PHEVs and BEVs could become a practical solution.
Posted by: HarveyD | 27 July 2009 at 09:34 AM
I think the use of battery heat to warm the vehicle is like so many other refinements.
It is not worth the research and production costs of implementation - at least it the beginning.
In the long term we can hope mass production and R&D make it worthwhile.
Actually a better hope is that batteries efficiency eliminates most of the waste heat.
One study that mentions utilizing waste heat:
http://www.nrel.gov/vehiclesandfuels/energystorage/pdfs/jte_2003-633_sw_ap.pdf
Posted by: ToppaTom | 27 July 2009 at 10:34 AM
The series hybrid solution for cold start at the moment is to use the ICE to heat the battery to nominal temp, before kicking in the electric. This is awkward and will certainly change as better chemistry avoids internal resistance at low temps.
Posted by: sulleny | 27 July 2009 at 04:21 PM
One EV company took EV PT Cruisers to New York City to use as taxi cabs. The cold whether dropped the battery range to 40% of normal. It sounded to me like battery warmers would have helped there.
Posted by: SJC | 28 July 2009 at 10:26 AM