Consolidated composites are strongly considered as promising adsorbents for adsorption cooling system (ACS) applications. Binder plays a vital role to synthesize consolidated composite. In this study, consolidated composites are synthesized employing highly porous activated carbon (AC) namely Maxsorb III and two types of binders: (i) polymerized ionic liquid (PIL) and (ii) polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) for the development of compact CO2 based ACS. Adsorption characteristics of composite/CO2 pairs are studied at temperature ranging from 20 to 70 °C and pressure up to 7000 kPa. Experimental adsorption uptake data are fitted with Langmuir, Tóth, Dubinin-Astakhov (D-A) and modified D-A equations. It is observed that composite employing 90 wt Maxsorb III and 10 wt PIL shows maximum CO2 adsorption uptake of 1.41146 cm3 g�1, whilst composite incorporating 90 wt Maxsorb III and 10 wt PVA can adsorb up to 1.31311 cm3 g�1. Besides, the adsorption/desorption kinetics and thermodynamic properties such as isosteric heat of adsorption, specific heat capacity, entropy and enthalpy, which are very crucial for ACS design, are rigorously analyzed here. © 2019 Elsevier B.V.