Carnot Cycle: On The Motive Power of Fire in 1824. The Book Proposed A Generalized Theory of

CARNOT CYCLE
In the early 19th century, steam engines played a big role in industry and
transportation. However, there was a lack of theories for the conversion of thermal
energy to motive power, which someone had to develop. Who was in charge of this
was Sadi Carnot, a French military engineer born in 1976 who published Reflections
on the Motive Power of Fire in 1824. The book proposed a generalized theory of
heat engines, as well as an idealized model of a thermodynamic system for a heat
engine that is now known as the Carnot cycle, and developed the foundation of
the second law of thermodynamics, this is why he is called "Father of
thermodynamics."
When a system is taken through a series of different states and finally returned to
its initial state, cycle is said to have occurred. In the process of going through this
cycle, the system may perform work on its surroundings, for example by moving a
piston. A system undergoing a Carnot cycle is called a Carnot heat engine, although
such a "perfect" engine is only a theoretical construct and cannot be built in
practice. However, a microscopic Carnot heat engine has been designed and run.
Stages
1) Reversible isothermal expansion
During this step the gas is allowed to expand, doing work on the surroundings by
pushing up the piston. Although the pressure drops from points 1 to 2 the
temperature of the gas does not change during the process because it is in
thermal contact with the hot reservoir at Th, and thus the expansion is isothermal.
Heat energy is absorbed from the hot reservoir resulting in an increase in the
entropy of the gas by the amount ΔS1 = Qh /Th.
2) (Isentropic) Reversible adiabatic expansion
For this step the gas in the engine is thermally insulated from both the hot and
cold reservoirs. Thus they neither gain nor lose heat, an 'adiabatic' process. The
gas continues to expand by reduction of pressure and losing an amount of
internal energy equal to the work done on the surroundings. The gas expansion
without heat input causes it to cool to the "cold" temperature, Tc. The entropy
remains unchanged.
3) Reversible isothermal compression
Now the gas in the engine is in thermal contact with the cold reservoir at
temperature Tc. The surroundings do work on the gas, pushing the piston down,
causing an amount of heat energy Qc to leave the system to the low temperature
reservoir and the entropy of the system to decrease by the amount ΔS2 = Qc/Tc.
4)(Isentropic) Isothermal compression
Once again the gas in the engine is thermally insulated from the hot and cold
reservoirs. During this step, the surroundings do work on the gas, pushing the
piston down further, increasing its internal energy and causing its temperature to
rise back to Th, but the entropy remains unchanged. At this point the gas is in the
same state as at the start of step 1.
Entropy
For any cyclic process, there will be an upper portion of the cycle and a lower
portion. For a clockwise cycle, the area under the upper portion will be the
thermal energy absorbed during the cycle, while the area under the lower portion
will be the thermal energy removed during the cycle. The area inside the cycle will
then be the difference between the two, but since the internal energy of the
system must have returned to its initial value, this difference must be the amount
of work done by the system over the cycle.
Reversed Carnot cycle
The Carnot heat-engine cycle described is a totally reversible cycle. So if we revere
the directions of any heat and work interactions are reversed. Heat is absorbed
from the low-temperature reservoir, heat is rejected to a high-temperature
reservoir, and a work input is required to accomplish all this. Becoming a Carnot
refrigeration engine.
Efficiency
The Carnot cycle has the greatest efficiency possible of an engine based on the
assumption of the absence of incidental wasteful processes such as friction, and
conduction of heat between different parts of the engine at different
temperatures.
In order to approach the Carnot efficiency, the processes involved must be
reversible and involve no change in entropy. This means that the Carnot cycle is an
idealization, since no real engine processes are reversible and all real physical
processes involve some increase in entropy.

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