Moving packed bed particle/supercritical carbon dioxide (SCO₂) heat exchanger (MPBE) is a critical equipment to integrate particle thermal energy storage technology with SCO₂ power cycle block in the next‐generation concentrated solar power plants. A predictive heat transfer model for designing and evaluation of shell and plate particle/SCO₂ moving packed bed heat exchanger is presented, with radiation, pressure drop and SCO₂ property variation taking into account. It is found that increasing particle diameter and solids bulk voidage will lower the overall heat transfer coefficient. Change of channel width imposes little effects on the overall heat transfer coefficient, while influences the total heat exchange greatly. MPBE with longer channel length allows smaller overall heat transfer coefficient. Due to approximate linear variation of specific heat and low pressure drop in the nominal boundary operating condition range, ignoring SCO₂ C_p variation is valid, and the relative error due to adopting a C_p invariable evaluated at the bulk temperature and constant pressure is less than 1%. Convection resistance generally ranks first in the contribution to thermal resistance, followed by solids‐wall resistance and conduction resistance. Nevertheless, solids‐wall resistance dominates at larger particle diameter (≥550 μm). Radiation is an important contributor to heat transfer behavior, especially at high particle diameter and solids bulk voidage. The relative error caused by neglecting radiation can be up to 23.76%.

Precooling is of significant importance for postharvest fruits and vegetables to control the quality degradation and prolong the shelf-life. Current precooling methods include room cooling, forced-air cooling, hydrocooling, vacuum cooling, contact or package icing, and cryogenic cooling, all of which have their advantages and disadvantages. The first two methods with the cooling medium of air are extensively used because of the wide applicable range of fruits and vegetables. Numerous studies have been devoted to cope with the drawbacks of these two air-based precooling methods with various evaluation criteria and optimization methods. A systematic literature review on these studies is firstly conducted with respect to experimental and numerical investigations respectively for the two methods. The main contributions from the previous studies are also summarized respectively with the research objectives and performance metrics. The literature review indicates that the current performance evaluation is limited to apparent parameters and the optimal design is only proposed based on the performance evaluation and comparison. Furthermore, with inspiration from the research in other domains, a scheme of advanced evaluation and optimization for air-based precooling methods is proposed with thermodynamic evaluation metrics and constructal optimization methods from the interdisciplinary perspective.