A review of the innovative application of phase change materials to cold-chain logistics for agricultural product storage

Abstract

The agricultural cold-chain logistics system is significant for agricultural product preservation and reducing losses. Moreover, it meaningfully promotes the income of farmers and rural revitalization in China, to a certain extent. The energy-storage technology as an emerging distributed solution has been attracting increasing attention over recent years. However, because of the low performance of energy-storage materials and lack of integration methods, many agricultural products rot during transportation. The current challenge resides in how the agricultural cold-chain logistics system can meet the requirements of stable and efficient continuous operation and reduce rot during the transportation of agricultural products. For this purpose, it is necessary to consider improving the performance of energy-storage materials and achieve their more-efficient integration into the entire agricultural cold-chain logistics system. Future trends in the agricultural cold-chain logistics system involve the high performance and low carbon footprint of energy-storage materials, which are key to meeting environmental standards and changing market demands. Advances in renewable energy technologies and energy-storage solutions have significantly accelerated the industrialisation of this system. The agricultural cold-chain logistics system will become the main force in promoting rural revitalisation in the future, which is a necessary condition for narrowing the development gap between China and other developed countries in this context. Therefore, this paper reviews the properties of the energy-storage materials that are suitable for the agricultural cold-chain logistics system and how to integrate these materials into that system.