Talk:Endoreversible thermodynamics

Novikov Engine
Hebert Peró (talk) 03:42, 19 March 2014 (UTC) Clarification is needed in the relation between the temperatures of the formula given. In the table the indexes are Tc and Th in Celsius and in the formula TL and TH in Kelvin, and the simple conversion: Tc+237,3 and Th+237,3 do not result in the efficiency stated in the table.


 * True, but adding 273.15 instead of 237.3 gives the table's efficiencies. Vaughan Pratt (talk) 21:14, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Energy or power?
The lede begins with "It gives an upper bound on the energy that can be derived from a real process"

I propose to replace "energy" with "power". If I hear no objections within a week I'll make that change. Vaughan Pratt (talk) 06:23, 8 December 2022 (UTC)


 * Sorry, forgot about this, made the change just now.
 * The reason "power" is needed here is that the Carnot efficiency is fine for energy provided the isothermal phases are done very slowly, but then you get almost zero power. When you speed up the isothermal phases in order to get a decent amount of power, the heat transfer doesn't have time to go between the reservoir and the working fluid.  But if you speed it up too much, no heat transfer at all occurs.  Hence there is a parabola between these two extremes of zero power whose peak is at sqrt(T₁/T₂). Vaughan Pratt (talk) 21:24, 17 August 2023 (UTC)