FINITE-TIME THERMODYNAMIC ANALYSIS OF A CARNOT ENGINE WITH INTERNAL IRREVERSIBILITY

This paper extends Curzon and Ahlborn's result which gives a thermodynamic efficiency of an endoreversible Carnot engine. It is shown that the internal irreversibilities of a Carnot engine can be characterized by a single parameter representing, the ratio of two entropy differences. Named the cycle irreversibility parameter, the presence of this parameter in the equations for maximum power and efficiency clearly shows that an engine with internal irreversibilities delivers less power and has a lower efficiency than an endoreversible engine.