The effect of active and passive battery thermal management systems on energy consumption, battery degradation, and carbon emissions of an electric vehicle

Many thermal management systems are being developed and researched to regulate the battery temperature of an electric vehicle. However, the performance of these systems in controlling the cells' temperatures has been examined at the module or cell size in the literature, leaving out their impact on the environment when they are practically used for battery thermal management in an EV. This study examines the carbon emission of an electric vehicle in Tehran using air-, water-, and phase change material (PCM)-based battery thermal management systems (BTMSs) considering real drive conditions. For every month of a year, battery power variations and temperature changes are considered in the simulated cases with resolution of second, and the battery aging is computed over ten years. The results demonstrate that the simulated vehicle with the PCM-based system consumes 14.68 % and 22.71 % less energy than the air- and water-based systems, respectively. The battery capacity loss for PCM-, air-, and water-based systems at the end of the 10th year are 6.95 %, 7.17 %, and 7.26 %, respectively. Furthermore, it should be noted that the simulated vehicle's carbon emissions with the water-based, air-based, and PCM-based BTMSs are 12.242 kg, 11.241 kg, and 10.042 kg per 100 km, respectively.