Lost work, extra work and entropy production for a system with complexity: the stepwise ideal-gas Carnot cycle

Francesco Di Liberto (1)

1 Università di Napoli

This paper is an extension of a previous paper [F. di Liberto-Phi. Mag. 87,569 (2007) ] devoted to Lost work and entropy production; here we introduce also the Extra work (i.e. W_Extra =W_in -W_Rev) in an irreversible process. and apply both the concepts to the analysis of a system with complexity: the stepwise ideal gas Carnot cycle. A stepwise Carnot cycle is performed by means of N small weights, (here called dw's), which are first added and then removed from the piston of the vessel containing the gas. The work performed by the gas can be found as increase of the potential energy of the dw's. We identify each single dw and thus evaluate its raising i.e. its increase in potential energy. In such a way we find how the energy output of the cycle is distributed among the dw's. The size of the dw's affects the Entropy production and therefore the Lost and Extra work. The raising distribution depends on the removing process we choose. Since these processes are N!, there are N! distributions of the raisings of the dw's

Mots clés: Physical Sciences

Francesco Di Liberto. Lost work, extra work and entropy production for a system with complexity: the stepwise ideal-gas Carnot cycle. Philosophical Magazine, 2008, 88 (33-35), pp.4177-4187. ⟨10.1080/14786430802459529⟩. ⟨hal-00513969⟩