Chapter 11

Heat Engines and the

Second Law of
Thermodynamics
Lecture PowerPoint
© 2019 McGraw-Hill Education

In this chapter, we are going to take a brief look at some applications of the law of
thermodynamics. (We are not going to delve into those laws themselves, only the practical
applications.)

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 The laws of thermodynamics
...are critical to
making
intelligent
choices about
energy in
today’s global
economy.

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We will see that these applications have significant effects on our daily lives and on the
environment.

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 What Is a Heat Engine?
How do heat
engines work?
What determines
their efficiency?

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A heat engine is simply a method of using heat to do some kind of work. The gasoline
engine in most cars is a good example.

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 Heat Engines 1

A gasoline engine is a form

of a heat engine.
• Gasoline is mixed with air.
• A spark ignites the mixture,
which burns rapidly.
• Heat is released from the
fuel as it burns.
• The heat causes the gases
in the cylinder to expand,
doing work on the piston.
• The work done on the piston
is transferred to the drive
shaft and wheels.
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You probably have a basic idea of how this works. Gas mixes with air in the cylinders and
gets ignited. The explosion pushes the cylinder in the piston, turning the drive shaft and
wheels.

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 Heat Engines 2

• The wheels push against the road.

• According to Newton’s third law,
the road exerts a force on the
tires, allowing the car to move
forward.
Not all the heat from burning
fuel is converted to work done in
moving the car.
• The exhaust gases emerging from
the tailpipe release heat into the
environment.
• Unused heat is a general feature
of heat engines.

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It’s not a very efficient process, however. Much of the chemical energy in the gasoline is
lost as heat through the engine and the exhaust gases.

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 Heat Engines 3

All heat engines share

these main features of
operation:
• Thermal energy (heat) is
introduced into the
engine.
• Some of this energy is
converted to mechanical QH = W + QC
work.
• Some heat (waste heat) is
released into the
environment at a
temperature lower than
the input temperature.

© 2019 McGraw-Hill Education

All heat engines use the same general process. Heat is put in, some is converted to useful
work, and some is lost as wasted energy.

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 Efficiency
Efficiency is the ratio of
the net work done by the
engine to the amount of
heat that must be
supplied to accomplish
this work.

W
e=
QH

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Efficiency is a measure of how much work is done by the heat we put in. That is, it’s the
percentage of heat input that actually gets converted to work.

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 Carnot Engine
The efficiency of a typical automobile engine is
less than 30%.
• This seems to be wasting a lot of energy.
• What is the best efficiency we could achieve?
• What factors determine efficiency?
In analogy to water wheels, Carnot reasoned that
the greatest efficiency of a heat engine would be
obtained by taking all the input heat at a single
high temperature and releasing all the unused heat
at a single low temperature.

© 2019 McGraw-Hill Education

The gasoline engine in the car is not very efficient. Auto manufacturers have been
improving efficiency over the long run, but the improvements in gasoline engines are only
very small increases in efficiency.

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 Carnot Engine and Carnot Cycle 1

Carnot also reasoned that the processes should

occur without undue turbulence.
• The engine is completely reversible: it can be turned
around and run the other way at any point in the cycle,
because it is always near equilibrium.
• This is Carnot’s ideal engine.
The cycle devised by Carnot that an ideal engine
would have to follow is called a Carnot cycle.
An (ideal, not real) engine following this cycle is
called a Carnot engine.

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A scientist by the name of Carnot dreamed up an ideal engine (a theoretical concept) that
we now call a Carnot engine. This is a theoretical concept that we use to think about
engine efficiency.

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 1. Heat flows into cylinder at temperature TH. The fluid
expands isothermally and does work on the piston.
2. The fluid continues to expand, adiabatically.
3. Work is done by the piston on the fluid, which
undergoes an isothermal compression.
4. The fluid returns to its initial condition by an
adiabatic compression.

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Here’s a diagram of who the engine works (in theory, that is).

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 Carnot Efficiency
The efficiency of Carnot’s ideal engine is called the
Carnot efficiency and is given by:

TH − TC
eC =
TH

This is the maximum efficiency possible for any

engine taking in heat from a reservoir at absolute
temperature TH and releasing heat to a reservoir at
temperature TC.
Even Carnot’s ideal engine is less than 100%
efficient.
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By taking the temperature at different points in the process, we can come up with the
Carnot efficiency. Even so, we can never get as close to 100% efficiency as we might like.

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 Refrigerators and Heat Pumps
A refrigerator is also a form of
a heat pump.
It also moves heat from a
cooler reservoir to a warmer
reservoir by means of work
supplied from some external
source.
It keeps food cold by pumping
heat out of the cooler interior
of the refrigerator into the
warmer room.
An electric motor or gas-
powered engine does the
necessary work.

© 2019 McGraw-Hill Education

You may have heard the term “heat pump,” most likely in reference to heating and cooling
systems. Your refrigerator is another form of heat pump. Here’s a general description of
how it works. Most household refrigerators run on an electric motor.

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 While a refrigerator is a form of heat pump, the term heat
pump usually refers to a device that heats a building by
pumping heat from the colder outdoors to the warmer
interior.
An electric motor does the
work needed to run the pump.
The amount of heat available
to heat the house is greater
than the work supplied:

W + QC = QH

We can get a larger amount of heat from the heat pump

than by converting the electrical energy directly to heat
(often 2-3 times as much).
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One way to heat a house is use the electricity directly. The electricity heats up some kind of
heating element (like in a portable electric heater) and that heat is sent out into the room
via radiation or convection (blowing the warm air around).

The heat pump is a much more efficient means of doing so.

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 A heat pump heats a house by exchanging heat in an
outside coil and transferring that heat to another coil
inside, which releases heat to the air inside the
building.
Many heat pumps are
designed to pump heat in
either direction, acting as air
conditioners in the summer.
Most air conditioners are heat
pumps that pump heat from
inside a building to the
warmer exterior.
Heat pumps are most
effective for heating houses
in climates where the temperature difference is
not too great.

© 2019 McGraw-Hill Education

Heat pumps work both ways. They can also pump heat out of a house. They work best in
climates where the inside and outside temperature are not too great.

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 Thermal Power Plants and Energy
Resources
The most common way of producing electric power
in this country is a thermal power plant that uses
some form of heat engine, whether fueled by coal,
oil, or natural gas (fossil fuels).
Thermodynamics plays an extremely important
role in any discussion of the use of energy.
As worldwide economic development continues
and fossil-fuel resources are depleted, questions
of the optimal uses of energy resources become
critical.
Wise decisions depend on the participation of an
informed, scientifically literate citizenry.

© 2019 McGraw-Hill Education

Power plants that generate electricity for us often use thermal processes base on fossil
fuels. There are two environmental concerns here. We only have limited reserves of fossil
fuels, and their use generates a lot of wasted heat energy.

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 Thermal-Electric Power Plant 1

1. Fossil fuel (coal, oil, natural gas) is burned to

release heat that causes the temperature of
water and steam to increase.

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Here’s the first step in generating electricity … fossil fuels heat up water and convert it to
steam.

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 Thermal-Electric Power Plant 2

2. Hot steam is run through a turbine (a heat

engine) that turns a shaft connected to an
electric generator.

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That steam is used to run a turbine that drives the generator.

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 Thermal-Electric Power Plant 3

3. Electricity is transmitted through power lines to

consumers.

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Last step, the electricity from the generator is sent out over the power grid to homes and
businesses.

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 Because the steam turbine is a heat engine, its
efficiency is inherently limited by the second law of
thermodynamics.
• Any real engine involves some irreversible processes
and so must fall short of the ideal conditions of a
completely reversible Carnot engine.
• A steam turbine comes closer to the ideal than the
highly turbulent internal-combustion engine.
The maximum possible efficiency is dictated by the
temperature difference between the hot and cold
reservoirs.
• Heating the steam to as high a temperature as possible
is advantageous.
• The exhaust temperature will be near the boiling point
of water, where the steam condenses to water.

© 2019 McGraw-Hill Education

The steam turbine is a heat engine, so it has limits on how efficient it can be.

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 In practice, only about half the thermal energy
released in burning coal or oil is converted to
mechanical work or electrical energy.
The rest must be
released into the
environment at
temperatures too
low for running
heat engines.
Cooling towers
transfer this waste
heat into the
atmosphere, or
heated water is
released into a river.

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The usual efficiency of power plants using fossil fuel is about 50% or less.

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 Alternatives to Fossil Fuels
Nuclear power plants
• Lower thermal efficiencies
• More heat released into environment
• No carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases
released
• Nuclear waste must be processed and disposed of

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Nuclear power plants have one big advantage … they do not release greenhouse gases into
the atmosphere.

There are some drawbacks, however. They are less efficient. They release a lot more heat
because they are less efficient. And – the big one – they produce nuclear waste that must
be handled long after its removal.

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 Geothermal Energy
• Heat from the interior of the earth, such as hot springs
and geysers.
• Water temperature is not hot enough to yield a high
efficiency
• Good for specific applications and at specific locations

This geothermal
power plant in
Iceland uses
geothermal
energy to run
steam turbines.

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Geothermal power plants are a good option for some locations, but the are generally
limited in their applications. There must be a good local source of geothermal energy.
Iceland, with a lot of nearby volcanoes, is one example.

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 Sun as energy source
• Warm ocean currents
• Solar power

Mirrors focus
sunlight to
heat a central
boiler at a
solar-thermal
power plant

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Solar energy is another good course. It produces very little pollution. And it can be
harvested in various ways.

1) Solar farms use photovoltaic cells to generate electricity directly. (The mirror shown in
this image is possible, but generally not necessary.)
2) Wind turbines capture the energy of air heated by solar radiation.
3) Undersea turbines can also use the warm ocean currents that arise from the Sun
heating the water.

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