Battery environmental conditions for safe operation in electric ships

Research Project, 2024

Sweden is at the forefront of advocating electrified water-borne transport. One of the major technical challenges is battery modules and power systems. Consequently, the ship industry has noticed that battery cooling with efficient ventilation is a big urgent problem in the technology development to ensure the safety of ships and crews, regarding the controlling of overheating, toxic gases, or fires. The cooling is also critical to extend battery life and maintain optimal performance. Another question is how to warm ship compartments, which used to be resolved by reusing the waste heat from engines.
However, current design methods for a ventilation system have been mainly developed for traditional non-electric vessels and, therefore, are not optimized to cool batteries. There is limited available knowledge in literature, and answers are diverse and case dependent.
This project aims to develop a multidisciplinary design procedure, which couples ship architecture modelling, ventilation system reduced-order modelling, battery pack layout design, and high-fidelity simulations for battery packs cooled by the ventilation system. In the end of the project, a showcase designed for a benchmark battery pack layout in an inland waterway ship will be delivered to end users such as Stena Teknik and DNV, who will also be engaged in the project activities to provide data and technical advice.
As a pre-study, this project will kick off a collaboration between three research groups from M2 and E2, enhance the connection with the other research institutes like RISE, and furthermore help them jointly attract external large fundings.