The growing demand for air conditioning associated with greater emphasis on comfort conditions and increased internal loads involves a significant increase in electricity demand.

Compression systems using conventional air conditioning refrigerants (chlorofluorocarbons and hydrochlorofluorocarbons-CFC-HCFC) harmful to the ozone layer. Since 1987 the Montreal Protocol signed by 134 countries, the XII Summit held in December 1999 in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) establishes a series of actions to reduce the use of these substances.

Another problem associated with conventional air conditioning systems is that the spikes in electricity consumption occur at times of higher rates. Besides the economic cost to the consumer must consider the availability of the resource in a given environment, which can lead to outages.

The use of absorption machines is an alternative to this problem because it uses other substances for operation (water, ammonia or lithium bromide). On the other hand, another point in favor of certain environmental advantages of this technology is that it is powered by thermal energy instead of electricity, thus being able to take advantage of waste heat from other processes or solar energy.

AIGUASOL participated in the Iberoamerican network on solar refrigeration and air conditioning (RIRAAS) and conducted a study on the production systems of cold by absorption machines coupled to systems that use solar thermal energy and showed its application on three specific projects : air conditioning cellars, cold and heat production for a network of district cooling air for germination in a production plant.