Heat Engines

And
Their Efficency
Prepared by:
Name: Syed Masum Abbas Jaffri
Name: Syed Aley Rasool Shah

What is a heat engine?

A heat engine is a device that converts thermal
energy to other useful forms of energy, such as
mechanical and electrical energy.
Two main types of heat engines:
1. Internal Combustion Engines
2. External Combustion Engines

An Internal Combustion Engine is a heat engine

where the combustion of a fuel occurs with an
oxidizer (usually air) in a combustion chamber.
In IC engine, the fuel combustion takes place
inside the engine.

Examples of Internal Combustion Engines:

Gasoline Engine

Diesel Engine

Gas-Turbine Engine

Rocket- Propulsion System

An External Combustion Engine is a heat engine

where an internal working fluid is compressed and
heated by combustion of an external fuel through
the engine wall or a heat exchanger.
In EC engine, the fuel combustion takes place
outside the engine.

Examples of External Combustion Engines:

Steam Engine
Stirling Engine

A basic heat engine model consists of the

following:
heat is absorbed from a source at a high
temperature,
Work is done by the engine, and
Heat is expelled by the engine to a
source at a lower temperature.

A General Heat Engine Model

High temperature source

To calculate the amount of work

done by a heat engine:

Where:

Heat
Engine

= work done by engine

= energy added as heat
= energy removed as
heat

Low temperature reservoir

Sample

Problem

A heat engine takes in 4500 J of heat energy, then does

2750 J of work. How much heat energy does the engine
expel as waste?
Given:

Required:
Answer:

Solution:

The goal of a heat engine is to convert ALL of the heat

input into useable work, BUT
There will always be some waste heat that doesnt get
converted into useful work.
The less heat wasted, the more efficient the engine.

measure of how well an engine operates is given by

the engines efficiency (eff).

Efficiencyis a measure of a machines energy
effectiveness. It is the ratio of work done by the engine to
the energy added to the system as heat during one cycle.

Where:
eff = efficiency
Wnet= net work done by engine
Qh= energy added as heat
Qc = energy removed as heat

Efficiencies for different types of engines:

Engine Type

eff (calculated
maximum
values)

Engine Type

eff (measured
values)

Steam Engine

0.29

Steam Engine

0.17

Steam
Turbine

0.40

Steam
Turbine

0.30

Gasoline
Engine

0.60

Gasoline
Engine

0.25

Diesel Engine

0.56

Diesel Engine

0.35

Notice that efficiency is a unitless quantity that can be

calculated using only the magnitudes for the energies
added to and taken away from the engine.
This equation confirms that a heat engine has 100
percent efficiency (eff = 1) only if there is no energy
transferred away from the engine as heat (Qc = 0).

Unfortunately, there can be no such heat engine, so

the efficiencies of all engines are less than 1.
In other words, a heat engine with perfect efficiency
would have to convert all of the absorbed heat energy
to mechanical work.
One of the consequences of the second law of
thermodynamics is that this is impossible.

In practice, it is found that all heat engines convert

only a fraction of the absorbed heat into mechanical
work.
On the basis of this fact, one form of the second law
of thermodynamics is stated as follows:
No heat engine operating in a cycle can absorb
thermal energy from a reservoir and perform an equal
amount of work.

Sample Problem
Find the efficiency of a gasoline engine that, during
one cycle, receives 204 J of energy from combustion and
loses 153 J as heat to the exhaust.
Given
Qh = 204 J
Qc = 153 J
Required
eff = ?

Solution

Answer
Evaluate
Only 25 percent of the energy as heat is used by the
engine to do work. As expected, the efficiency is less
than 1.

Thank you