This paper proposes a novel carbon dioxide transcritical power cycle combined with an absorption refrigeration cycle (CDTPC-ARC) to recover waste heat from jacket water and exhaust gas of heavy-duty ICEs. Firstly, a detailed study is conducted to investigate the effects of key operating parameters on the performance of CDTPC-ARC. Secondly, a comparative study on the proposed CDTPC-ARC and the existing CDTPC-DT (consisting of CDTPC with regenerator and CDTPC without regenerator) under the same waste heat conditions shows that CDTPC-ARC can produce approximately constant net power output (W-net) when T-Cw = 18-36 degrees C, while CDTPC-DT can't operate in the transcritical power cycle when T-cw >= 26.1 degrees C. Finally, parametric optimization is performed to achieve the maximum W-net of the combined cycles by using genetic algorithms (GA). Results show that CDTPC-ARC can produce more W-net and have a larger recycle efficiency compared with CDTPC-DT when T-cw >20 degrees C. When T-cw= 25 degrees C, W-net,W-op of CDTPC-ARC is 14.6-20.2% higher than that of CDTPC-DT and the corresponding eta(rec) is 9.8-25.5% higher than that of CDTPC-DT. In addition, economic performance comparison between the two cycles is performed. The results show that CDTPC-ARC has better economic performance. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.