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A heat engine is a system that converts heat to usable energy, particularly mechanical energy, which can then be used to do mechanical work. [1] [2] While originally conceived in the context of mechanical energy, the concept of the heat engine has been applied to various other kinds of energy, particularly electrical, since at least the late 19th century.
Carnot engine diagram (modern) - where an amount of heat Q H flows from a high temperature T H furnace through the fluid of the "working body" (working substance) and the remaining heat Q C flows into the cold sink T C, thus forcing the working substance to do mechanical work W on the surroundings, via cycles of contractions and expansions.
The working fluid is slightly superheated at the turbine exit and the turbine typically has an efficiency of 90% based on reversible, adiabatic expansion. From the turbine exit, the working fluid enters the condenser where it rejects heat, -Q C, to the cold sea water.
The heat source may be provided by the combustion of a fuel and, since the combustion products do not mix with the working fluid and hence do not come into contact with the internal parts of the engine, a Stirling engine can run on fuels that would damage other engine types' internals, such as landfill gas, which may contain siloxane that could ...
This "exhaust" heat is represented by the "Q out" flowing out of the lower side of the cycle shown in the T–s diagram below. Cooling towers operate as large heat exchangers by absorbing the latent heat of vaporization of the working fluid and simultaneously evaporating cooling water to the atmosphere.
T-s diagram for the ideal/real ORC. The working principle of the organic Rankine cycle is the same as that of the Rankine cycle: the working fluid is pumped to a boiler where it is evaporated, passed through an expansion device (turbine, [3] screw, [4] scroll, [5] or other expander), and then through a condenser heat exchanger where it is finally re-condensed.
A reversible heat engine with a low efficiency delivers more heat (energy) to the hot reservoir for a given amount of work (energy) to this engine when it is being driven as a heat pump. All these mean that heat can transfer from cold to hot places without external work, and such a heat transfer is impossible by the second law of thermodynamics .
The centerpiece of that analysis, now known as a Carnot engine, is an ideal heat engine fictively operated in the limiting mode of extreme slowness known as quasi-static, so that the heat and work transfers are between subsystems that are always in their own internal states of thermodynamic equilibrium. It represents the theoretical maximum ...