Maximum efficiency of steady-state heat engines at arbitrary power

2016/03/31 by Artem Ryabov, Viktor Holubec
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.stat-mech

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.93.050101

published as Phys. Rev. E 93, 050101 (2016)

arxiv created 2016/05/10 · arxiv updated 2016/05/18

Abstract

We discuss the efficiency of a heat engine operating in a nonequilibrium steady state maintained by two heat reservoirs. Within the general framework of linear irreversible thermodynamics we derive a universal upper bound on the efficiency of the engine operating at arbitrary fixed power. Furthermore, we show that a slight decrease of the power below its maximal value can lead to a significant gain in efficiency. The presented analysis yields the exact expression for this gain and the corresponding upper bound.

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