A combined power and refrigeration cycle is proposed, which combines the Rankine cycle and the absorption refrigeration cycle. This combined cycle uses a binary ammonia-water mixture as the working fluid and produces both power output and refrigeration output simultaneously with only one heat source. A parametric analysis is conducted to evaluate the effects of thermodynamic parameters on the performance of the combined cycle. It is shown that heat source temperature, environment temperature, refrigeration temperature, turbine inlet pressure, turbine inlet temperature, and basic solution ammonia concentration have significant effects on the net power output, refrigeration output and exergy efficiency of the combined cycle. A parameter optimization is achieved by means of genetic algorithm to reach the maximum exergy efficiency. The optimized exergy efficiency is 43.06% under the given condition. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.