In this paper, an electricity-cooling cogeneration system based on Rankine-absorption refrigeration combined cycle is proposed to recover the waste heat of the engine coolant and exhaust gas to generate electricity and cooling onboard ships. Water is selected as the working fluid of the Rankine cycle (RC), and a binary solution of ammonia-water is used as the working fluid of the absorption refrigeration cycle. The working fluid of RC is preheated by the engine coolant and then evaporated and superheated by the exhaust gas. The absorption cycle is powered by the heat of steam at the turbine outlet. Electricity output, cooling capacity, total exergy output, primary energy ratio (PER) and exergy efficiency are chosen as the objective functions. Results show that the amount of additional cooling output is up to 18 MW. Exergy output reaches the maximum 4.65 MW at the vaporization pressure of 300 kPa. The study reveals that the electricity-cooling cogeneration system has improved the exergy efficiency significantly: 5-12% increase compared with the basic Rankine cycle only. Primary energy ratio (PER) decreases as the vaporization pressure increases, varying from 0.47 to 0.40. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.