A new concept, which is named as a chemical amplifier or CHC (chemical heat converter), was proposed to analyze the heat conversion cycle systems and its application in system innovation. This new concept primarily comprises a pair of reversible reactions, an endothermic and an exothermic reaction, which occur in the liquid-gas or solid-gas phase. By introducing the heat flux of high-temperature input and low-temperature output to meet the reactions, the CHC cycle produces two types of work capacities, W-A(+) and W-R*, which respectively employ the working fluid for the heat engine and the heat pump as carriers. These wok capacities can be used either separately or together when coupling with a heat engine sub-cycle and/or a heat pump sub-cycle, and the different heat conversion mechanisms in five kinds of heat conversion configurations were revealed using the proposed concept. And then to show a full application example of the CHC concept, an absorption power/cooling cogeneration cycle with working fluid difluoromethane and N,N-dimethylformamide was analyzed. This research exhibited that both the benefits of the increasing of expansion work in the heat engine sub-cycle and the reduction of work consumption for compression in the heat pump sub-cycle can be obtained through the work abilities output by the CHC which is driven by mid-low grade heat. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.