Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
An isothermal process is a type of thermodynamic process in which the temperature T of a system remains constant: ΔT = 0. This typically occurs when a system is in contact with an outside thermal reservoir, and a change in the system occurs slowly enough to allow the system to be continuously adjusted to the temperature of the reservoir through heat exchange (see quasi-equilibrium).
Expansion and cooling beyond the saturation vapor pressure is often idealized as a pseudo-adiabatic process whereby excess vapor instantly precipitates into water droplets. The change in temperature of an air undergoing pseudo-adiabatic expansion differs from air undergoing adiabatic expansion because latent heat is released by precipitation.
In this particular example, processes 1 and 3 are isothermal, whereas processes 2 and 4 are isochoric. The PV diagram is a particularly useful visualization of a quasi-static process, because the area under the curve of a process is the amount of work done by the system during that process.
The dependence of work on the path of the thermodynamic process is also unrelated to reversibility, since expansion work, which can be visualized on a pressure–volume diagram as the area beneath the equilibrium curve, is different for different reversible expansion processes (e.g. adiabatic, then isothermal; vs. isothermal, then adiabatic ...
For example, if the gas expands slowly against the piston, the work done by the gas to raise the piston is the force F times the distance d. But the force is just the pressure P of the gas times the area A of the piston, F = PA. [4] Thus W = Fd; W = PAd; W = P(V 2 − V 1) figure 3
The Carnot cycle is a cycle composed of the totally reversible processes of isentropic compression and expansion and isothermal heat addition and rejection. The thermal efficiency of a Carnot cycle depends only on the absolute temperatures of the two reservoirs in which heat transfer takes place, and for a power cycle is:
An isentropic process is depicted as a vertical line on a T–s diagram, whereas an isothermal process is a horizontal line. [2] Example T–s diagram for a thermodynamic cycle taking place between a hot reservoir (T H) and a cold reservoir (T C). For reversible processes, such as those found in the Carnot cycle:
Most steady-flow devices operate under adiabatic conditions, and the ideal process for these devices is the isentropic process. The parameter that describes how efficiently a device approximates a corresponding isentropic device is called isentropic or adiabatic efficiency.