Question

A Carnot engine has the highest efficiency compared to any other heat engine when operating between the same two energy reservoirs”. Justify the statemen

Answer 1

Explanation:

Jeremy Dunning-Davies BSc, PhD, in Concise Thermodynamics (Second Edition), 2011

A Carnot engine is an engine whose working fluid has the following properties;

(a)

in each cycle, it passes through the same physical (equilibrium and nonequilibrium) states;

(b)

it consists of one and the same phase and it has a fixed mass throughout a cycle;

(c)

it withdraws an amount of heat Q1 from a large heat reservoir at temperature T1 and delivers an amount of heat Q2 to a similar reservoir at temperature T2, with T2 < T1, in every cycle;

(d)

it exchanges no other heat with its surroundings and there are no other entropy changes in the engine.