The burgeoning electric vehicle industry has become a crucial player in tackling environmental pollution and addressing oil scarcity. As these vehicles continue to advance, effective thermal management systems are essential to ensure battery safety, optimize energy utilization, and prolong vehicle lifespan. This paper presents an exhaustive review of diverse thermal management approaches at both the component and system levels, focusing on electric vehicle air conditioning systems, battery thermal management systems, and motor thermal management systems. In each subsystem, an advanced heat transfer process with phase change is recommended to dissipate the heat or directly cool the target. Moreover, the review suggested that a comprehensive integration of AC systems, battery thermal management systems, and motor thermal management systems is inevitable and is expected to maximize energy utilization efficiency. The challenges and limitations of existing thermal management systems, including system integration, control algorithms, performance balance, and cost estimation, are discussed, along with potential avenues for future research. This paper is expected to serve as a valuable reference for forthcoming research.

Supercritical carbon dioxide (SCO₂) is widely used in many fields of energy and power engineering, such as nuclear reactors, solar thermal power generation systems, and refrigeration systems. In practical applications, SCO₂ undergoes a cooling process significantly when it is cooled near the pseudo–critical point. Because of the drastic variations in thermo–physical properties, the heat transfer characteristics fluctuate, affecting the heat exchange and overall cycle performance. This paper summarizes extensive experiments and numerical simulations on the cooling process of SCO₂ in various application scenarios. The effects of various working conditions, such as mass flow, working pressure, pipe diameter, flow direction, and channel shapes, are reviewed. The applicability and computational results using different numerical methods under different working conditions are also summarized. Furthermore, empirical correlations obtained in experiments at different conditions are included. The present review can provide a helpful guideline for the design of effective cooling systems or condensers so that the accuracy of the design and efficiency of the system can be improved.