Low-dissipation Carnot-like heat engines at maximum efficient power

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the optimal efficiency of low-dissipation Carnot-like heat engines at maximum efficient power, revealing bounds and universal features of efficiency in different dissipation regimes.

Contribution

It derives bounds and universal characteristics of efficiency at maximum efficient power for low-dissipation Carnot-like engines, including symmetric and asymmetric dissipation cases.

Findings

Derived bounds on efficiency for extreme dissipation asymmetries.

Identified universal features of efficiency at maximum efficient power.

Formulated efficiency expressions for symmetric dissipation.

Abstract

We study the optimal performance of Carnot-like heat engines working in low dissipation regime using the product of the efficiency and the power output, also known as the efficient power, as our objective function. Efficient power function represents the best trade-off between power and efficiency of a heat engine. We find lower and upper bounds on the efficiency in case of extreme asymmetric dissipation when the ratio of dissipation coefficients at the cold and the hot contacts approaches, respectively, zero or infinity. In addition, we obtain the form of efficiency for the case of symmetric dissipation. We also discuss the universal features of efficiency at maximum efficient power and derive the bounds on the efficiency using global linear-irreversible framework introduced recently by one of the authors.