The successful market penetration of modern absorption heat pumps (AHP) today is critically dependent on their thermodynamic performance as well as other key factors like cost, reliability and inherent safety. Conventional AHPs have a proven record in the first two aspects but crucial shortcomings in the last two. For this reason it has been imperative to search for alternative working pairs that could potentially provide comparable performance while also satisfying the rest of the conditions to the best extent possible. As part of a systematic approach towards this direction, a detailed cycle analysis was performed, utilizing an idealized AHP system containing a real working pair, which enabled the identification of five dimensionless parameters and key thermophysical properties that influence the system's thermodynamic efficiency and the circulation ratio. In order to validate those findings, these parameters were calculated and compared between conventional and alternative AHP refrigerants. It turned out that low molecular weight ratios between absorbent and refrigerant have a beneficial effect on both coefficient of performance and the circulation ratio. Furthermore, both the refrigerant acentric factor and the absorbent vaporization enthalpy shall be minimized to obtain better performance. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.