Absorption refrigeration systems are a promising way to reduce electricity consumption in the field of refrigeration and cooling. To improve the thermal energy utilization performance of the absorption refrigeration system, an absorption/absorption-compression refrigeration system with a large working range is proposed in this paper. The new system consists of a conventional single-effect absorption sub cycle and an absorption-compression refrigeration subcycle, and they share the condenser, evaporator, absorber and some other relative components. The temperature of the waste gas exhausted from the system can be 35 degrees C lower than that of the waste gas from a traditional, single-effect absorption refrigeration system. For the proposed system, the cooling capacity per unit mass of flue gas reaches 58.95 kJ kg(-1) when the evaporation temperature is 15 degrees C, which is 28.21% higher than that of the single-effect absorption refrigeration system. The exergy efficiency of the proposed system is as high as 25.94%. To indicate the direction of system optimization, the new system is further studied using a parametric analysis. The new absorption/absorption-compression refrigeration system provides a promising way to efficiently utilize heat sources with large temperature change or multiple heat sources with different temperatures. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd.