Life Cycle Assessment of a DC Powered Cold Box for Modern Supply Chain Solutions

This paper gives the design, development and performance review of a solar-powered DC cold box to be used in the sustainable cold chain management in off-grid and resource constrained areas. The system combines a DC vapor compression refrigeration system, photovoltaic (PV) module, battery storage, and improved thermal insulation with phase change material (PCM) to be always kept operational with little energy loss. The fact that the proposed system operates directly on DC, has an optimized strategy regarding insulation, and has a minimal carbon emission footprint over regular conventional AC-based refrigeration systems makes it a novel system. Under ambient condition of 28-35 °C, experimental validation was performed to test thermal performance, energy consumption and system reliability. These findings showed that there was a stable temperature maintenance between 4-6 °C with a backup duration of up to 42 hours without sunshine. Moreover, simplified carbon emission analysis shows that the CO2 emission will decrease significantly because of the removal of the grid reliance and increase in energy efficiency. The system was demonstrated to have improved preservation properties, as well as minimizing post-harvest losses of up to 40 percent. The suggested DC cold box would be an effective, affordable and sustainable, environmentally friendly solution to the current cold chain logistics.