quality of useful energy

[AntonioLao]

In the early years of the nineteen century, Sadi Carnot (1796-1832) was a young French engineer who was very determined to contribute to France’s economic and military might by concentrating his scientific efforts to study the efficiency of the newly discovered much improved steam engine by James Watt (1736-1819) of the British industry. Although Carnot’s model of heat as a fluid was wrong compared to the more realistic modern concept of the kinetic theory, he was able to deduce at a correct experimental fact for classical thermodynamics that the efficiency of a perfect steam engine is independent of the working substance but simply depends only on the temperatures of the hotter heat source and subsequent release of wasted energy into the colder heat sink.


The simple theoretical formula he arrived at is that the efficiency, in general, of a heat engine, in particular, that of a steam engine is the ratio of the work produced over the heat absorbed. The efficiency is 1 if all the heat is converted into work with no energy wasted. This wasted energy is used to raise the temperature of the surrounding heat sink. This heat sink is never part of the design of the heat engine at the outset. The heat sink energy is wasted energy of very low quality.

[mkirkpatrick]

I can really identify with this post Antonio as in the sixties I worked on the railway as a fireman on steam locomotives they were most efficent and could pull hundreds of tons of dead weight with apparant ease,also when you were the one shoveling the coal into the cavernous mouth of the firebox you might have thought differently,you could shovel at least 5 tons of coal per shift.


regards michael.

[AntonioLao]

My question is how to reverse the universal process of increasing entropy hence useless energy becoming useful again?

[mkirkpatrick]

My question is how to reverse the universal process of increasing entropy hence useless energy becoming useful again?

Is energy ever really useless then Antonio?

regards michael.

[AntonioLao]

Energy becomes totally useless if and only if the universal entropy reaches maximum value also known as the heat death of the universe.

[mkirkpatrick]

Energy becomes totally useless if and only if the universal entropy reaches maximum value also known as the heat death of the universe.

Cant really see that happening though,as far as I understand it energy cannot be destroyed only converted.


regards michael.

[AntonioLao]

The limit of energy conversion is total uselessness since every step of conversion increases the entropy.

[mkirkpatrick]

The limit of energy conversion is total uselessness since every step of conversion increases the entropy.

So you are saying then that there will come a time when energy is zero and that an energyless void remains?


regards michael.

[AntonioLao]

there will come a time when energy is zero

Not zero but randomly distributed or simply means disorderly distributed. The hope is that order can again arise from chaos.

[Drifter]

Evolutes of Unmanifest Matter;
Rediscovery of Pure Consciousness,
Returning to Self Consciousness.
http://swamij.com/prakriti-purusha-sankhya.htm