## 1 Introduction  
The use of renewable energy sources and waste energy is an important task in order to fulfill the newest energy demands [1], especially for heating/cooling and refrigeration purposes, not only for stationary applications (residential and industrial buildings) but also for mobile uses. Nowadays, mobile A/C and refrigeration are solely based on vapor compression systems, wherein the compressor is mechanically driven by the vehicle engine. Although it is subjected to a phase-out, the most used refrigerant is still HFC-134a, with a global warming potential (GWP) of 1300: if services and end-of-life are considered, it results in equivalent CO\({}_{2}\) emissions in the range 15-37 g/km for a vehicle traveling 12,000 km/y [2, 3]. Such an environmental impact, neglected by manufacturers and regulations, is equivalent to 16%-39% of the limits set by European emission standards for new passenger cars in 2020. Refrigerated freight transport is mainly achieved through vapour compression as well, often run by low-efficiency, high-emission auxiliary units (diesel or electric), and presents several criticalities,including a low COP (Coefficient of Performance) \(\approx\) 0.5-1.75, the employment of R404a, and a GWP of 3922 [4]. Alternative systems based on eutectic solutions (cold storage in phase change materials) or cryogenic cooling (with liquid nitrogen) are have been spreading recently. These scale down the issue of refrigerant losses, but do not avoid the energy consumption by refrigeration. Contrarily, the heat generated by internal combustion engines (ICE) can supply thermally-driven technologies, in order to provide refrigeration for transport. Thermoelectric systems can combine the Seebeck and Peltier effects to generate electric power by heat and produce cooling power by electricity, but their low efficiency prevents practical use. Alternatives could be thermoacoustic refrigeration and the ejector refrigeration cycle. Despite the prospective low cost and durability, which resulted in interest from automotive manufacturers such as Mazda and Peugeot, thermoacoustic refrigeration for mobile applications is still at a basic research level, due to its low efficiency, just like the ejector refrigeration cycle. Instead, great effort has been applied in the field of adsorption storage for refrigeration for road transport applications, which represent a mature technology: several working pairs have been studied for mobile applications (water/ammonia, silica gel/water, zeolite/water) and commercial products have been available for stationary applications since decades ago. On the other hand, they are generally affected by high specific volume and weight, entailing the need for further development to be successfully applied to transport A/C and refrigeration. This has been a specific subject of the TOPMACS European project, whose aims included the development of a sorption A/C system for heavy trucks supplied by the heat from the engine coolant loop rather than by the flue gases [5]. This TOPMACS prototype was designed and realized by ITAE-CNR [6]. Food and medicine transportation are two further sectors wherein cooling demand requires significant energy consumption. Most of the studies aimed at the reduction of such consumption focused on the use of high-temperature waste heat from the flue gases of the I.C. engine, needed to run a sorption appliance intended for ice-making or sub-zero refrigeration. To that end, cold storage is a viable technology: the use of sensible heat is the most commonly used technology, even if latent heat, sorption heat, and thermochemical heat storage technology are always more often used nowadays [7]. Thanks to the great advancements in the last few years, adsorption technology has become even more frequently used for cooling/heating production, thanks also to the different units available on the market [8; 9]. Cooling (from the evaporator) or heating (from the adsorber) effects could be achieved as a function of working conditions.