The study deals with a solar or waste heat driven three-bed adsorption cooling cycle employing mass recovery scheme. A cycle simulation computer program is developed to investigate the performance of the chiller. The innovative chiller is driven by exploiting solar/waste heat of temperatures between 60 and 90 degrees C with a cooling source at 30 degrees C for air-conditioning purpose. The performance of the three-bed adsorption chiller with mass recovery scheme was compared with that of the three-bed chiller without mass recovery. It is found that cooling effect as well as solar/waste heat recovery efficiency, eta of the chiller with mass recovery scheme is superior to those of three-bed chiller without mass recovery for heat source temperatures between 60 and 90 degrees C. However, COP of the proposed chiller is higher than that of the three-bed chiller without mass recovery, when heat source temperature is below 65 degrees C. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.