In this study

an L-shaped pulsating heat pipe was proposed to address the thermal management problem of lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles. A pulsating heat pipe has a long heating section

a short cooling section

and a short insulation section. The parametric effects on the start-up and heat transfer characteristics of an L-shaped pulsating heat pipe were studied

includingthe heating capacity of 10–30 W

cooling water temperature of 20–30 ℃

and methanol filling ratio of 7.1%–21.2%. The results showed that as the filling ratio increased

the start-up temperature increased

and the thermal resistance first decreased and then increased. As the heating power increased

the start-up temperature

start-up time

and thermal resistance decreased. The maximum temperature of the heater was 54.7 ℃ for a 14.1% filling ratio and 10–20 W heating power

indicating that the L-shaped pulsating heat pipe can effectively maintainthe temperature required for the normal operation of batteries in an electric vehicle.