Organic Rankine Cycles (ORC) are systems that can effectively recover low-grade heat for electric power generation. For ORC to be a viable technology, it should operate safely and efficiently under variable operating conditions due to exogenous and operating specifications changes.

The Rankine cycle is named after William John Macquorn Rankine, a Scottish polymath professor at Glasgow University. Heat energy is supplied to the system via a boiler where the working fluid (typically water) is converted to a high-pressure gaseous state (steam) in order to turn a turbine.

The fluids are alkanes, fluorinated alkanes, ethers and fluorinated ethers. The ORC cycles operate between 100 and 30 °C typical for geothermal power plants at pressures mostly limited to 20 bar, but in some cases supercritical pressures are also considered.