A review of imidazolium ionic liquids research and development towards working pair of absorption cycle

The concerns of energy consumption and environment pollution urge researchers to work on the development of clean energy and the utilization of waste energy. As one important topic, absorption cycle technology has attracted considerable attention because it can be powered by low-grade heat, e.g., solar energy and waste heat. In recent years, researchers proposed that ionic liquids (ILs) as novel alternative absorbent combined with refrigerant such as water, ammonia, alcohols, and hydrofluorocarbons can be used as working pairs for absorption refrigeration cycle, heat pump, and absorption power cycle. In this paper, researches done in imidazolium IL working pairs regarding to status of evaluation and selection methods, thermophysical property measurement and modeling, as well as their future prospect assessments, i.e., developing potential studies about the absorption cycle performance adopting new working pairs, have been reviewed.