Rashid, Farhan LaftaKadhim, Saif AliBouabidi, AbdallahAbdalrahem, Mushtaq K.Al-Obaidi, Mudhar A.Ashour, Ali M.Agyekum, Ephraim Bonah2025-10-152025-10-1520260022-474X1879-121210.1016/j.jspr.2025.1028202-s2.0-105015680921https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jspr.2025.102820https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14517/8438Kadhim, Saif Ali/0000-0003-0359-5022; Al-Obaidi, Dr. Mudhar/0000-0002-1713-4860Application of solar drying in preservation of agricultural and medicinal products is a sustainable process that requires adequate lighting that could be hampered by periodic fades and thermal variation. This review systematically analyzes recent innovations in Solar Dryers (SDs) integrated with Phase Change Materials (PCMs), based on literature published between 2019 and 2025. The review methodology involved a structured search across soild databases, with studies selected on the basis of their focus on PCM-enhanced solar drying, reported performance metrics, and economic or environmental assessments. The main results show that the drying times are being lowered by up to 70.5% in vegetables (such as cucumbers) when using PCM-integrated dryers and the moisture removal rates were 0.101 kg/h when the medicinal herbs used PCM-integrated dryers, which is in comparison with the conventional methods. Other innovations including paraffin wax and nano-enhanced PCMs ranked a 10-20 % optimization on thermal efficiency, hybrid system such as PCMs plus sensible heat storage is even better with temperatures kept up to 5-20 degrees C above ambient during off-sunshine times. Retention of higher nutritional values was also earmarked with PCM-dried fruits and vegetables showing better retention of nutrients (e.g. with 7.77 mg vitamin C in oranges being retained when compared with 5.99 mg vitamin C retained in open sun drying). Economic and environmental advantages encompassed payback periods as short as 0.39 years and mitigation of up to 21,650 tons of CO2 emissions over the operational lifetime of the dryer. The review finds that the integration of PCM leads to enhancement of solar drying, and it is an energy-efficient, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly solution that can be used; nevertheless, research challenges, such as PCM selection and system scaling, are identified that can be solved in the future.eninfo:eu-repo/semantics/closedAccessSolar DryerDryingPCMsEnergy StorageSustainabilityArticle