Design procedure of simple and accurate model of electric double layer capacitor (EDLC) targeting fast verification purposes of heat transfer simulations

Abstract

From the macrostructure of electric double layer capacitor (EDLC) and from heat transfer point of view, the volumetric properties of EDLC act as surrounding anisotropy. The core of the supercapacitor is made of coil, which is composed of a number of turns. This coil is from the physical aspect represented as a anisotropic structure that has to be considered during the design of a 3D model. Such structure of capacitor’s core is then in axial direction geometrically and physically different comparing to radial direction. This results in diverse expression of thermal conductivities in the mentioned directions. Therefore, it is necessary to analytically determine axial and radial parts of heat conduction thus avoiding high degree of thermal model’s complexity. After mathematical analysis, this paper will also describe the procedure of design of the EDLC thermal simulation model. During development of EDLC thermal model, and for computational and simulation purposes, the CFD software, COMSOL 3.5a, has been used. The principal aim was to reach very close proximity of the simulation results as compared to measurements, and simultaneously achieve very low computational time. Targeting high degree of model’s accuracy, several alternatives of model complexity will be shown.