Cooling technologies in cooled supply chains : about the suitability and sustainability of dry ice as a cooling medium: an exhaustive review

Abstract: Reducing carbon and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is a major challenge in the transportation and logistics sector. This issue is still a considerable challenge, especially in the cold supply chain for the food and beverage, e-commerce, and pharma last-mile segment. This paper investigates existing research to assess the published literature, product awareness, and utilisation of dry ice in the cold supply chain. The literature review identified 23 papers based on the keywords search. The review focused on the papers which demonstrated studies and experiments in the reduction of CO2 and GHG emissions in the cold supply chains with respect to Phase Change Material (PCM) and dry ice cooling. The main aim of this paper is to investigate existing literature on dry ice and to comprehend the degree of dry ice utilisation in cold supply chain management. Based on the literature review and the analysis of recent experiments on using dry ice as the cooling medium provided various alternative supply chain solutions. Moreover, various future research topics related to sustainability and the last-mile issues with respect to dry ice cooling were classified, which could potentially fill the identified knowledge gap. The study resulted in identifying certain best practices and potential key performance indicators (KPIs) for dry ice cooling