*Article* **Thermal Performance Improvement for Different Strategies of Battery Thermal Management Systems Combined with Jute—A Comparison Study †**

**Rekabra Youssef 1,2,\*, Md Sazzad Hosen 1, Jiacheng He 1, Mohammed AL-Saadi 1,2, Joeri Van Mierlo <sup>1</sup> and Maitane Berecibar <sup>1</sup>**


**Abstract:** Jute is a cheap, eco-friendly, widely available material well-known for its cooling properties. In electric vehicles (EVs), dissipating a huge amount of the heat generated from lithium-ion batteries with an efficient, light, and low-power consumption battery thermal management system (BTMS) is required. In our previous study, jute fibers were proposed and investigated as a novel medium to enhance the cooling efficiency of air-based battery thermal management systems. In this paper, as the first attempt, jute was integrated with a phase change material (PCM) passive cooling system, and the thermal performance of a 50 Ah prismatic battery was studied. Temperature evolution, uniformity, and cooling efficiency were investigated. A comparison between the thermal behavior of the air-based BTMS and PCM-assisted cooling system was performed. The results indicated that adding jute to the BTMS increased the cooling efficiency and especially decreased the temperature development. Furthermore, the temperature difference (Δ*T*) efficiency was enhanced by 60% when integrating jute with PCM, and temperature uniformity improved by 3% when integrating jute with air-based BTMS. This article compared the integration of jute with active cooling and passive cooling; thus, it shed light on the importance of jute as a novel, eco-friendly, lightweight, cheap, available, and nontoxic material added to two strategies of BTMS. The setup was physically made and experimentally studied for the purpose of BTMS optimization.

**Keywords:** jute; electric vehicles; thermal management; evaporative cooling; passive cooling; air cooling; phase change material (PCM); lithium-ion battery
