This study investigates the efficiency of two distinct heat-recovery schemes as applied to the two-bed silica gel-water adsorption chiller. Performance predictions stemming from an experimentally verified distributed-parameter model compare favorably with the experimental results at various operating conditions. Our study highlights the pivotal role played by heat-recovery schemes to ameliorate the chiller performance and substantially improve the coefficient of performance (or COP). The two different schemes essentially offer the same cooling capacity and similar COP boosting capability. In the studied working conditions of a two-bed adsorption chiller, the difference in COP by using the two schemes is less than 5%. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.