SECOND LAW OF
THERMODYNAMICS
Dr. Shobhit Srivastava
Associate Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering
OBJECTIVE
• Introduce the second law of thermodynamics.
• Identify valid processes as those that satisfy both the first and second laws of thermodynamics.
• Discuss thermal energy reservoirs, reversible and irreversible processes, heat engines, refrigerators, and heat
pumps.
• Describe the Kelvin–Planck and Clausius statements of the second law of thermodynamics.
• Apply the second law of thermodynamics to cycles and cyclic devices.
• Describe the Carnot cycle.
• Examine the Carnot principles, idealized Carnot heat engines, refrigerators, and heat pumps.
• Determine the expressions for the thermal efficiencies and coefficients of performance for reversible heat engines,
heat pumps, and refrigerators.
OUTCOME OF THE LECTURE
Understanding of Source, Sink, Heat Engine, Heat Pump and Refrigerators.
Understanding of efficiency, COP, COP of Heat pump and COP of refrigerator.
Understanding of Second law of thermodynamics statement and use of Second
law of thermodynamics in general life.
Understanding of PMM.
Understanding of Carnot engine cycle.
WHY SECOND LAW OF THERMODYANMICS??
A cup of hot coffee does not Transferring heat to a paddle wheel
get hotter in a cooler room. will not cause it to rotate.
These processes cannot occur even though they are not in violation of the first
law.
Processes occur in a certain direction, and not
in the reverse direction.
A process must satisfy both the first and second laws of thermodynamics to proceed.
MAJOR USES OF THE SECOND LAW
The second law may be used to identify the direction of processes.
The second law also asserts that energy has quality as well as quantity.
The first law is concerned with the quantity of energy and the transformations of
energy from one form to another with no regard to its quality. The second law
provides the necessary means to determine the quality as well as the degree of
degradation of energy during a process.
The second law of thermodynamics is also used in determining the theoretical
limits for the performance of commonly used engineering systems, such as heat
engines and refrigerators, as well as predicting the degree of completion of
chemical reactions.
THERMAL ENERGY RESERVOIRS
A hypothetical body with a relatively large thermal energy capacity that can supply
or absorb finite amounts of heat without undergoing any change in temperature is
called a thermal energy reservoir, or just a reservoir.
Bodies with relatively large thermal
masses can be modeled as thermal
energy reservoirs.
SOURCE AND SINK
A source supplies energy in the form
of heat, and a sink absorbs it.
Examples:
Source: Solar energy, oil furnace,
nuclear reactor, etc.
Sink: The atmosphere, rivers, etc.
Heat Engine
The devices that convert heat to work.
They receive heat from a high-temperature
source and convert part of this heat to work
(usually in the form of a rotating shaft.)
They reject the remaining waste heat to a
low-temperature sink.
They operate on a cycle.
Heat engines and other cyclic devices usually
involve a fluid to and from which heat is
transferred while undergoing a cycle. This
fluid is called the working fluid.
STEAM POWER PLANT
HEAT ENGINES
Work can always be converted to heat
directly and completely, but the
reverse is not true.
Part of the heat received by a heat
engine is converted to work, while the
rest is rejected to a sink.
THERMAL EFFICEINCY
Can we save Qout ?
Can we not just take the condenser out of the plant and save all that waste energy?
The answer is, no because of that without a heat rejection process in a
condenser, the cycle cannot be completed. In a steam power plant, the condenser
is the device where large quantities of waste heat is rejected to rivers, lakes,
or the atmosphere.
Every heat engine must waste some energy by transferring it to a low-
temperature reservoir in order to complete the cycle, even under idealized
conditions.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics: Kelvin–Planck Statement
It is impossible for any device that operates on a cycle
to receive heat from a single reservoir and produce a
net amount of work.
No heat engine can have a thermal efficiency of 100 %
or as for a power plant to operate, the working fluid
must exchange heat with the environment as well as
the furnace.
The impossibility of having a 100% efficient heat engine
is not due to friction or other dissipative effects. It is a
limitation that applies to both the idealized and the actual
heat engines.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics: Clausius Statement
It is impossible to construct a device that operates
in a cycle and produces no effect other than the
transfer of heat from a lower-temperature body to
a higher- temperature body.
It means that a refrigerator cannot operate unless its
compressor is driven by an external power source, such as
an electric motor.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics: Clausius Statement
This way, the net effect on the surroundings
involves the consumption of some energy in the
form of work, in addition to the transfer of heat
from a colder body to a warmer one.
• The transfer of heat from a low-temperature medium to a high-
temperature one requires special devices called refrigerators.
• Refrigerators, like heat engines, are cyclic devices.The working
fluid used in the refrigeration cycle is called a refrigerant.
• The most frequently used refrigeration cycle is the vapor-
compression refrigeration cycle.
Coefficient of Performance
The efficiency of a refrigerator is expressed in terms
of the coefficient of performance (COP).
The objective of a refrigerator is to remove heat
(QL) from the refrigerated space.
Heat Pumps
The objective of a heat pump is to supply heat QH
into the warmer space.
The work supplied to a heat pump is used to extract
energy from the cold outdoors and carry it into the
warm indoors.
for fixed values of QL and QH
SOME IMPORTANT FACTS ABOUT HEAT PUMP
Most heat pumps in operation today have a
seasonally averaged COP of 2 to 3.
Most existing heat pumps use the cold outside
air as the heat source in winter (air-source HP).
In cold climates their efficiency drops
considerably when temperatures are below the
freezing point.
In such cases, geothermal (ground-source) HP
that use the ground as the heat source can be
used.
Such heat pumps are more expensive to install, but they are also
more efficient.
Air conditioners are basically refrigerators whose refrigerated space is a
room or a building instead of the food compartment.
The COP of a refrigerator decreases with decreasing refrigeration
temperature.
Therefore, it is not economical to refrigerate to a lower temperature than
needed.
Energy efficiency rating (EER):
The amount of heat removed from the cooled space in Btu’s for 1 Wh
(watthour) of electricity consumed.
PERPETUAL-MOTION
MACHINES
Any device that violates the first
or the second law.
A perpetual-motion machine that
violates the first law (PMM1).
PERPETUAL-MOTION
MACHINES 2
A perpetual-motion machine that
violates the second law of
thermodynamics (PMM2).
Reversible Process
A thermodynamic process is said to be reversible if the process can be turned back to such
that both the system and the surroundings return to their original states, with no other change
anywhere else in the universe.
Why are we interested in reversible processes?
(1) They are easy to analyze.
(2) They serve as idealized models (theoretical limits) to which actual processes can be
compared.
(3) They help us in incurring the maximum efficiency a system can provide in ideal working
conditions and, thus, the target design that can be set.
Examples of Reversible Processes
• Slow adiabatic compression or Slow isothermal compression
• The frictionless motion of solids. etc.
Irreversible Process
An irreversible process can be defined as a process in which the system and the surroundings
do not return to their original condition once the process is initiated.
Examples:
• Relative motion with friction
• Throttling
• Heat transfer
• Diffusion
The factors that cause a process to be irreversible are called irreversibilities.
They include friction, unrestrained expansion, mixing of two fluids, heat transfer across
a finite temperature difference, electric resistance, inelastic deformation of solids, and
chemical reactions.
The presence of any of these effects renders a process irreversible
THE CARNOT CYCLE
Reversible Isothermal Expansion
(process 1-2, TH = constant)
Reversible Adiabatic Expansion
(process 2-3, temperature drops from TH to
TL)
Reversible Isothermal Compression
(process 3-4, TL = constant)
Reversible Adiabatic Compression
(process 4-1, temperature rises from TL to
TH)
Reversed Carnot Cycle
The Carnot heat-engine cycle is a
totally reversible cycle.
Therefore, all the processes that
comprise it can be reversed, in which
case it becomes the Carnot
refrigeration cycle.
References:
Y.A.Cengel and M.A. Boles, Thermodynamics: An Engineering Approach, McGraw-
Hill,N.Y.,1998
C.P. Arora, Thermodynamics, TMH, New Delhi,1998
P.K.Nag, Engineering Thermodynamics, TMH, 2008
