Absorption coolers use heat to regenerate their refrigerant. Two common types are a water vapour-LiBr chiller, and an ammonia-water chiller (in fact Einstein patented a mini bar chiller design still used today that has no moving parts, using just helium or hydrogen and gas absorption/evaporation to move refrigerating gasses around)
Single effect chillers have a low Coefficient of Performance (CoP) roughly around 0.4-0.6, meaning for every watt of heat you apply to a single effect chillers, you move 0.4-0.6W of heat, but they only need a minimum of 90⁰C in heat to power them.
Double effect chillers can reach 0.9-1.2 CoP.
Flue gasses are typically hotter than 90⁰C, so you’ll often see absorbers part of combined heat and power systems. Cooling in the summer, heating in the winter. All using waste heat from power generation.
What I find the most fascinating about them is they work using heat. The only power you need to apply is for a few pumps to move fluids around at low pressures, otherwise the primary refrigeration energy comes from heat regenerating the refrigerant.
I’ve often wondered what a district cooling system using these would get for efficiency if you colocated it with something energy hungry like a cement kiln or glass kiln.
Video of how a double effect chillers works
Edit: these are used already for district cooling, just usually for a campus like a university or government complex. The big benefit is you can run them on marginal heat sources, even off of low grade geothermal.
So my background is in instrumentation and process control as an engineering technologist. In my country that means I can do limited engineering within my scope of practice, part of which extends into thermodynamics, balance of plant, steam enthalpy calculations, sizing and speccing heat exchangers, boilers, condensers, compressors, turbines, valves, and the controls for all of it.
I’m very familiar with all of this, so I can tell you from experience that these absorber plants can be bolted on after an economizer (in the case of a single effect) or you can supply higher grade heat if you’re willing to sacrifice part of your economizer capacity in exchange for cooling in order to get high enough generator temperatures in a dual effect absorber.
Otherwise you have to trim with electrical resistors to get your preheated water up to the generator temp to run the absorber plant (also viable. Bolt on after the economizer and use a small amount of electrical heat to finish the missing heat to run the generator)
The 30-40⁰C you’re referencing is the condenser temperature at an electrical plant. That’s not the flue gas temperature which can still be quite high depending on the plant, in the range of 80-170⁰C depending on how efficient their design is.
Other processes like cement kilns, glass making, garbage incineration all can produce the temperatures you need for dual effect absorbers.
This isn’t theoretical, you can find these absorbers already in use at combined heat and power (CHP) plants running university campuses and government/company campuses. They are already used for limited district cooling for these places to accompany heating.
The overall benefit is they are extremely low impact on the environment since LiBr is non toxic, isn’t poisonous, doesn’t deplete the ozone layer, doesn’t contribute to GHG emissions like released butane or isobutane emissions would. It doesn’t produce toxic gasses or use high pressure or exotic temperatures or materials.
It also reduces electricity demand for cooling massively. An absorber chiller runs on practically unusable waste heat that’s too low enthalpy for any other use. You get free cooling and the plant is very low maintenance, ingests waste heat that would have gone up your chimney or flue, and spits out cold water. What’s not to like?
The best part is they also work extremely well with renewables making them natural partners if you have a thermal sand battery paired with it. District heating and cooling can run from one very simple plant, which is going to be more and more important as our climate gets more hectic from global warming.