An organic Rankine cycle (ORC), is fundamentally the same as a steam Rankine cycle; however, it uses a lower boiling point organic fluid to better match its operation to lower temperature heat sources. ORC systems can achieve better efficiencies than steam turbines for smaller systems (less than a few MW_e).

The organic Rankine cycle is is similar to the Rankine steam cycle, but uses an organic fluid such as refrigerants and hydrocarbons instead of water as the working fluid. The ordinary Rankine cycle uses thermal power to convert water to steam, which expands through a turbine in order to generate electricity.

The Rankine cycle applied using a supercritical fluid combines the concepts of heat regeneration and supercritical Rankine cycle into a unified process called the regenerative supercritical cycle (RGSC). It is optimised for temperature sources 125–450 °C.

an organic Rankine cycle (ORC) is simply a steam cycle in which the traditional steam is replaced by refrigerants or hydrocarbons. ORCs utilize clean energy resources: geothermal fluids, solar irradiation, ocean thermal gradient, heat from biomass combustion and waste heat from industrial thermal processes.