ABSTRACT
Ammonia is a natural refrigerant, thus with no greenhouse effect or stratospheric ozone depleting potential, as many organic refrigerants incorporate. This chapter addresses recent advances in absorption machines that use the combination of ammonia/salt as an example of an innovative solution to introduce new tendencies and concepts, but conventional concepts are the same as with conventional solvents. Absorption machine performances and applications depend on the working fluids used inside the machine as well as on the thermodynamic cycles. New developments of advanced thermodynamic cycles offer interesting possibilities of integrating absorption cycles into sustainable energy strategies based on distributed generation. Hybrid cycles that combine thermal energy and power have been also developed. The introduction of the electricity vector into absorption technology opens a new opportunity for energy integration. The chapter details the most canonical cycles and then shifts into advanced cycles, starting with hybrid cycles and following with the variants that offer power (electricity) production and combined thermal/power production.
