Heater for electric vehicle batteries
First Claim
Patent Images
1. A battery pack assembly comprising:
- at least one pouch cell providing opposed polymeric flexible film walls defining a pouch holding a set of plates including battery electrodes and providing exposed battery terminals, the polymeric flexible film walls extending generally in parallel to the plates and separated across a narrowest dimension of the pouch cell; and
a flexible film heater having exposed heater terminals that overlie and contact the battery terminals, the flexible film heater applied in thermal contact to the pouch cell by direct printing of a polymer positive temperature coefficient material on at least one of the polymeric flexible film walls to heat the same when a current passes between the heater terminals.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A battery pack assembly interleaves pouch cells with thin flexible heater elements to provide for distributed low-power heating with reduced thermal resistance between the heater elements and the cells. The heater elements may include terminals for direct attachment to pouch cell electrodes and to each other to facilitate power distribution among the heater elements.
32 Citations
19 Claims
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1. A battery pack assembly comprising:
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at least one pouch cell providing opposed polymeric flexible film walls defining a pouch holding a set of plates including battery electrodes and providing exposed battery terminals, the polymeric flexible film walls extending generally in parallel to the plates and separated across a narrowest dimension of the pouch cell; and a flexible film heater having exposed heater terminals that overlie and contact the battery terminals, the flexible film heater applied in thermal contact to the pouch cell by direct printing of a polymer positive temperature coefficient material on at least one of the polymeric flexible film walls to heat the same when a current passes between the heater terminals. - View Dependent Claims (2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15)
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3. A battery pack assembly comprising:
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at least one pouch cell providing opposed polymeric flexible film walls defining a pouch holding a set of plates including battery electrodes and providing exposed battery terminals, the polymeric flexible film walls extending generally in parallel to the plates and separated across a narrowest dimension of the pouch cell; and a flexible film heater having exposed heater terminals that overlie and contact the battery terminal terminals, the flexible film heater applied in thermal contact to at least one of the polymeric flexible film walls to heat the same when a current passes between the heater terminals; wherein the battery pack assembly includes multiple pouch cells each having an attached flexible film heater and stacked so that each pouch cell is in thermal contact with a flexible film heater; wherein the exposed heater terminals for successive film heaters extend generally along a plane of the film heater at different locations for different film heaters so heater terminals of a first film heater may attach to the battery terminals of an adjacent pouch cell and heater terminals of other film heaters may wrap around pouch cells to attach to an adjacent film heater without contacting other heater terminals.
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16. A method of manufacturing heated battery packs consisting of:
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at least one pouch cell providing opposed polymeric flexible film walls holding battery terminals providing exposed battery terminals, the polymeric flexible film walls extending generally in parallel to the plates and separated across a narrowest dimension of the pouch cell; and a flexible film heater having at least one of;
exposed heater terminals that overlie and contact the battery terminals and flexible exposed heater interconnection terminals and applied in thermal contact to at least one of the polymeric flexible film walls to heat the same when a current passes between the heater terminals,wherein the film heater provides a set of polymeric conductors extending between flanking distribution conductors extending along edges of the film heater, the method comprising; (a) positioning multiple pouch cells together in a stack with intervening film heaters; (b) attaching heater terminals of at least one of the film heaters to battery terminals of at least one pouch cell; and (c) attaching heater interconnection terminals of at least one film heater to two flanking distribution conductors of another film heater by folding the flexible heater interconnection terminals around an intervening pouch cell to contact the other film heater. - View Dependent Claims (17, 18, 19)
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Specification