Comparative analysis of organic rankine cycle, Kalina cycle and thermoelectric generator to recover waste heat based on energy, exergy, economic and environmental analysis method

•Comparative studies of ORC, KC and TEG were investigated at heat source below 100 °C.•System adaptive temperature of ORC, KC and TEG was defined.•Evaluating the environmental performance of ORC, KC and TEG through life cycle climate performance method. Recovering waste heat below 100 °C, accounting for 60 % of the whole waste heat, the Organic Rankine cycle (ORC), Kalina cycle (KC) and thermoelectric generator (TEG) are the most promising way, while the adaptive temperature for three systems has not been clearly defined and the thermodynamic, economic and environmental effects of these three systems have not been compared and evaluated. This paper employed the energy, exergy, economic and life cycle climate performance method to analyze the comprehensive performance of three systems for the low-temperature below 100 °C and medium-temperature within 100–200 °C. The adaptive temperature of ORC, KC and TEG are 130–200 °C, 100–130 °C and 50–100 °C. The thermal and exergy efficiency of ORC and KC exhibits 2.7–36.0 % higher than that of TEG when heat source exceeds 100 °C. The cost of electricity production of TEG is around 1–148 times larger than that of ORC and KC (greater than80 °C), while the equivalent CO2 emission of TEG is 2–590 times smaller than that of KC and ORC (50–200 °C). TEG prefers to recover the heat source with low flow rate and low temperature and is a valuable method to recover heat source below 100 °C in future.