A thermodynamic analysis has been carried out on a compression-absorption system that can be used for simultaneous heating and cooling applications. Refrigerant and absorbent pair of R-22 and DMETEG has been considered. The results are obtained for a system that can be used in dairy plants for pasteurization and chilling of milk for subsequent storage. Results show that by operating the system at marginally higher discharge pressures (about 30 bar) than normal (about 25 bar) one can achieve excellent performance despite the required large temperature lift. A comparison with a single stage vapour compression system shows that, the compression-absorption system yields much better overall performance especially when the temperature lifts are high. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.