Industrial plants continuously reject large amounts of thermal energy through warm liquid or gaseous effluents during normal operation. These energy losses contribute to an inflation of production costs and also threaten the environment. This paper investigates methods of recovering the residual low grade thermal energy and converting it into higher quality mechanical energy using the thermodynamic Rankine cycle principle. For the temperature range of the available thermal energy, water was shown to be a poor working fluid for the conversion system, thus several potential working fluids, including ammonia, synthetic refrigerants, and organic compounds have been considered as alternatives. A comparative analysis led to the identification of different performance evaluation criteria. For example, the water-based Rankine cycle and, to a lesser extent, the ammonia-based Rankine cycle proved to be interesting when the power generation potential per unit working fluid mass flow rate was considered. On the other hand, Rankine-like cycles using dry hydrocarbon working fluids proved much more interesting in terms of energy conversion efficiency, as well as in terms of the net mechanical power generation potential for a given heat source. All performance indicators were low at low temperatures, and improved as the primary heat source was available at higher temperatures. This paper also discusses the influence of various external and internal operating parameters, such as heat source and heat sink temperatures, turbine and pump isentropic efficiencies and the addition of an internal heat exchanger on the overall performance of the energy recovery and conversion system. Crown Copyright (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.