Carnot Cycle
www.CarnotCycle.com
We provide power plant and Rankine
Cycle,
Brayton Cycle and Organic Rankine Cycle project
development services. Our company also offers Demand
Side Management, absorption chillers,
cogeneration, trigeneration
power and energy systems and other Energy
Conservation Measures expertise.
Unlike most companies, we are equipment
supplier/vendor neutral. This means we help our clients select the best
equipment for their specific application. This approach provides our
customers with superior performance, decreased operating expenses and
increased return on investment.
Our company provides turn-key project solutions that include all or part
of the following:
-
Engineering and Economic Feasibility
Studies
-
Project Design, Engineering &
Permitting
-
Project Construction
-
Project Funding & Financing Options
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Shared/Guaranteed Savings program with no
capital requirements.
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Project Commissioning
-
Operations & Maintenance
For more information: call us at: 832-758-0027
What is the Carnot Cycle?
The Carnot Cycle has been described as being the most efficient thermal cycle possible,
wherein there is no heat losses, and consisting of four reversible processes, two isothermal and two adiabatic.
It has also been described as a cycle of expansion and compression of a reversible heat engine that does works
with no loss of heat.
History of the Brayton Cycle, Rankine
Cycle, and
Organic Rankine Cycle
What is the Brayton Cycle?
A turbine operates on the principal of the Brayton Cycle, which is
defined as a constant pressure cycle, with four basic operations which it accomplishes simultaneously and continuously for an uninterrupted flow of power.
What is the Rankine Cycle?
The Rankine cycle is a thermodynamic cycle used to generate electricity in many power stations, and is the
real-world approach to the Carnot cycle. Superheated steam is generated in a boiler, and then expanded in a steam turbine. The
steam turbine drives a generator, to convert the work into electricity. The remaining steam is then condensed and recycled as
feed-water to the boiler. A disadvantage of using the water-steam mixture is that superheated steam has to be used, otherwise the moisture content after expansion might be too high, which would erode the turbine blades.
What is An Organic Rankine Cycle?
A Rankine cycle is a closed circuit steam cycle. (Also - see Rankine
Cycle). An "organic" Rankine cycle uses a heated chemical instead of steam
as found in the Rankine Cycle. Chemicals used in the Organic Rankine Cycle
include freon, butane, propane, ammonia, and the new
environmentally-friendly" refrigerants.
Why use a chemical refrigerant?
A refrigerant boils at a temperature below the temperature of frozen ice. Solar heat, for example, of only 150 degrees Fahrenheit from a typical rooftop solar hot water heater, will furiously boil a refrigerant. The resulting high-pressure refrigerant vapor is then piped to
an organic Rankine cycle engine.
Why is it called "organic"?
"Organic" is a term used in chemistry to describe a class of chemicals that includes Freon and most of the other common refrigerants.
Background information on Rudolph Diesel and Sadi Carnot
Rudolph Diesel was educated at the predecessor school to the Technical
University of Munich, Germany. In 1878, he was introduced to the work of
Sadi Carnot, who theorized that an engine could achieve much higher
efficiency than the steam engines of the day. Carnot envisioned a cycle in
which a gas is compressed, heated, allowed to expand, and then cooled.
After the gas is cooled, the cycle begins anew. Mechanical energy is used
to compress the gas and thermal energy to heat it. In turn, expansion of
the gas yields mechanical energy, and its cooling yields thermal energy.
The net result is conversion of thermal energy to mechanical energy.1
Diesel sought to apply Carnot’s theory to the internal combustion
engine. The efficiency of the Carnot cycle increases with the compression
ratio—the ratio of gas volume at full expansion to its volume at full
compression. Nicklaus Otto invented an internal combustion engine in 1876
that was the predecessor to the modern gasoline engine. Otto’s engine
mixed fuel and air before their introduction to the cylinder, and a flame
or spark was used to ignite the fuel-air mixture at the appropriate time.2
However, air gets hotter as it is compressed, and if the compression ratio
is too high, the heat of compression will ignite the fuel prematurely. The
low compression ratios needed to prevent premature ignition of the
fuel-air mixture limited the efficiency of the Otto engine.
Rudolph Diesel wanted to build an engine with the highest possible
compression ratio. He introduced fuel only when combustion was desired and
allowed the fuel to ignite on its own in the hot compressed air.
Diesel’s engine achieved an efficiency higher than that of the Otto
engine and much higher than that of the steam engine. It also eliminated
the trouble-prone electric-spark ignition system. Diesel received a patent
in 1893 and demonstrated a workable engine in 1897.3 Today,
diesel engines are classified as “compression-ignition” engines, and
Otto engines are classified as “spark-ignition” engines.
* From the Department of Energy
website with permission
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