Carnot cycle and maximum efficiency of heat engines
Ciclo de Carnot y rendimiento máximo de las máquinas térmicas
- Date
- 1824 · confidence high
- Place
- Paris, France
- Credited to
- Sadi Carnot
- People
- 👤 Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot1796–1832
- Field
- Matter & energy
What was discovered
The efficiency of any heat engine depends only on the temperatures of the hot and cold reservoirs, and no engine can surpass the reversible one. 'Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire' contains the germ of the second law of thermodynamics.
Ignored until Clapeyron reformulated it in 1834; Carnot died of cholera in 1832.
What it led to
- Second law of thermodynamics (Clausius, Kelvin)
- Absolute temperature scale
- Thermodynamics as a science
- Optimisation of engines and power plants
Built on
- Caloric theory1789
- Watt steam engine
- Caloric theory
- Lazare Carnot's work on machines
Made possible
- Absolute temperature scale (Kelvin)1848
- First law of thermodynamics1850
- Heat pump (Kelvin's proposal)1852
- Lenoir gas engine1860
- Second law of thermodynamics and entropy1850-1865
- Brayton cycle and constant-pressure engine1872
- Steam turbine1884
- Efficient internal combustion engines
- Refrigerators and heat pumps
- Steam turbines