Heat Engine With Finite Thermal Reservoirs and Nonideal Efficiency

Abstract

The performance of an irreversible heat engine operating between two thermal reservoirs with finite, temperature-independent heat capacity is analyzed. For this purpose, a dynamic second-law efficiency is introduced and assumed to be constant. As the first-law efficiency increases from zero up to the Carnot limit, the common final temperature of the reservoirs interpolates between the arithmetic and geometric mean of their initial temperatures. The total output work and entropy change of the reservoirs are computed and related to the static efficiencies. The dynamic and static efficiencies are shown to be approximately equal to each other when the temperature of the cold reservoir is at least 10% of the temperature of the hot reservoir.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 01, 2009
Accession Number
ADA534892

Entities

People

  • Carl E. Mungan

Organizations

  • United States Naval Academy

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Climate Change
  • Differential Equations
  • Efficiency
  • Electronic Mail
  • Energy
  • Energy Transfer
  • Engines
  • Equations
  • Heat Capacity
  • Heat Energy
  • Heat Engines
  • Heat Transfer
  • Information Operations
  • Mathematics
  • Reservoirs
  • Thermodynamics
  • United States Naval Academy

Readers

  • Combustion science or combustion engineering.
  • Electrical Engineering
  • Hydrologic Risk Analysis and Mitigation.