Development and application of phase change material in fresh e-commerce cold chain logistics: A review

With the rapid development of information technology, the concept of e-commerce has entered thousands of households, especially since the outbreak of COVID-19, fresh products are sparing no effort to join the trend of online shopping. This paper mainly summarizes phase change materials' application and development prospects in fresh e-commerce cold chain logistics. By introducing the basic conditions of phase change temperature, heat conduction, and shape of organic phase change materials, inorganic phase change materials, and composite phase change materials, the advantages of composite phase change materials are compared. The practical application progress of composite phase change materials in the fresh e-commerce cold chain logistics process is reviewed. Composite phase change materials are widely used in “storage” and “last mile” in the cold chain logistics process of fresh e-commerce, and their application in pre-cooling and transportation will be the future research direction. • This paper mainly summarizes phase change materials' application and development prospects in fresh e-commerce cold chain logistics. • Further research is needed to improve the speed, cost, and applicability of precooling by widely applying PCMs to precooling technology. • The relationship between PCMs and vehicle speed can be observed.