General thermodynamic framework for understanding temperature-entropy diagram of batchwise operating thermodynamic cooling cycles

This article presents a general thermodynamic framework for the temperature-entropy (T-s) diagram of batchwise operating thermodynamic cooling cycles. Our approach is fully consistent with the rigor of classical thermodynamics and captures accurately characteristics of cyclic-steady-state performance of a batchwise operating cooling cycle. The Eulerian viewpoint is adopted to allow for a time invariant description of such a cycle on a T-s plane, and this results in the formation of close loops at all internal energy storage components and their connection(s). (C) 2001 American Institute of Physics.