10 Facts About Carnot cycle

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.

The Carnot cycle is reversible, and there is no generation of entropy.

The area inside the Carnot cycle is then 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 per Carnot cycle.

The P–V diagram of the reversed Carnot cycle is the same as for the Carnot heat-engine cycle except that the directions of the processes are reversed.

Carnot cycle's theorem is a formal statement of this fact: No engine operating between two heat reservoirs can be more efficient than a Carnot cycle engine operating between those same reservoirs.

An entropy change per Carnot cycle is made, for example, if there is friction leading to dissipation of work into heat.

In that case, the Carnot cycle is not reversible and the Clausius theorem becomes an inequality rather than an equality.

However, if the Carnot cycle is performed faster than the relaxation time of the working medium, the fluctuations of work are inevitable.

Carnot cycle realized that, in reality, it is not possible to build a thermodynamically reversible engine.

For example, for isothermal expansion as a part of the Carnot cycle, the following conditions are required to be satisfied simultaneously at every step in the expansion to realize it.