## 1 Introduction  
Cold storage technology forms an integral part of cold-chain management, which ensures the nutritional value of the products stored remains intact and reaches the consumers within its shelf-life period. Perishable commodities, such as fruits and vegetables, continue their metabolic activities even post-harvest and start deteriorating with time in the absence of proper storage facilities. These storages ensure maintenance of the required temperature and humidity, as specified for various products, to provide post-harvest cooling that removes the field heat and prevents microbial growth in the harvest [1, 2]. Particularly pertaining to a tropical country like India, which is the second largest producer of fruits and vegetables in the world, the cold storage facility is quintessential [3]. However, according to the statistics published by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, India, almost 50% of the country's cold storage is concentrated in the states of Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal [4]. The lack of cold storage in rural areas, especially in states other than those mentioned, to store fresh farm produce negatively affects the farmers' livelihood [5]. It can, thus,be inferred that the development of on-farm cold storage facilities would directly result in food loss reduction, income generation for farmers, and, eventually, rural development [5]. Specific energy consumption of cold storage systems, when compared globally, shows considerable variation ranging from 19 to 379 kWh/m3 amongst different countries due to various factors such as technologies used, mode of operation, and temperature variation in products handled, as well as ambient temperature [6]. To reduce the specific energy consumption, it, therefore, becomes necessary to incorporate energy-efficient technologies; and phase change material (PCM) integration with conventional vapor compression refrigeration (VCR) systems has great potential to minimize the gap between the energy supply and demand in the cold storage system, especially during power outages or blackouts [7]. PCM acts as a thermal backup by changing its phase to solidify during charging and liquefy during discharging while ensuring that the desired temperature is maintained inside the cold storage by absorbing any possible internal heat generation as well as heat influx from surroundings [8]. Studies have been conducted to provide insight into the incorporation of the phase change material into the VCR system either on the condenser side or the evaporator side [9; 10; 11; 12]. Application of PCM on the evaporator side prolongs the compressor's OFF time, which reduces the overall energy consumption while also preventing the destructive effect of frequent ON/OFF cycles [7]. Other advantages include improvement in Coefficient of Performance (COP) [8; 12], slower cold room temperature changes [13], along with better stability against thermal load variations [14; 15; 16]. However, it was also found that the immersion of the evaporator inside PCM degraded the system's performance and lowered the food quality [7]. In a study conducted by [PERSON] et al. [9], it was observed that the PCM (demineralized water) was placed in front of the evaporator and fan by modifying the air duct passage, which resulted in a reduction in energy consumption of the refrigerator prototype with PCM by 18.6% and the compressor ON-time ratio reduction by 13.6% compared with that of the refrigerator prototype without PCM. Another study [17] investigated the integration of PCM (water) into a beverage cooler by studying the effect of varying PCM slab thickness on the compressor ON-time ratio by placing it on the rare side of the evaporator. It was found that during the compressor OFF-time, sudden temperature rise was limited.