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A Carnot heat engine [2] is a theoretical heat engine that operates on the Carnot cycle. The basic model for this engine was developed by Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot in 1824. The Carnot engine model was graphically expanded by Benoît Paul Émile Clapeyron in 1834 and mathematically explored by Rudolf Clausius in 1857, work that led to the ...
A Carnot cycle is an ideal thermodynamic cycle proposed by French physicist Sadi Carnot in 1824 and expanded upon by others in the 1830s and 1840s. By Carnot's theorem, it provides an upper limit on the efficiency of any classical thermodynamic engine during the conversion of heat into work, or conversely, the efficiency of a refrigeration system in creating a temperature difference through ...
Since a Carnot heat engine is a reversible heat engine, and all reversible heat engines operate with the same efficiency between the same reservoirs, we have the first part of Carnot's theorem: No irreversible heat engine is more efficient than a Carnot heat engine operating between the same two thermal reservoirs.
When a Carnot cycle runs in reverse, it is called a reverse Carnot cycle. A refrigerator or heat pump that acts according to the reversed Carnot cycle is called a Carnot refrigerator or Carnot heat pump, respectively. In the first stage of this cycle, the refrigerant absorbs heat isothermally from a low-temperature source, T L, in the amount Q L.
This limiting value is called the Carnot cycle efficiency because it is the efficiency of an unattainable, ideal, reversible engine cycle called the Carnot cycle. No device converting heat into mechanical energy, regardless of its construction, can exceed this efficiency.
Since, by the second law of thermodynamics, this is statistically improbable to the point of exclusion, the Carnot efficiency is a theoretical upper bound on the reliable efficiency of any thermodynamic cycle. Empirically, no heat engine has ever been shown to run at a greater efficiency than a Carnot cycle heat engine.
Carnot understood that the conduction of heat between bodies at different temperatures is a wasteful and irreversible process, which must be minimized if the heat engine is to achieve its maximum efficiency. Carnot cycle in a pressure vs. volume diagram. This graphical representation of Carnot's cycle was introduced by Émile Clapeyron in 1834.
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: