A diagrammatic representation of entropy production

TL;DR

This paper presents a visual method for representing entropy production in heat transfer, emphasizing the asymmetry between heating and cooling processes from a second-law perspective.

Contribution

It introduces a diagrammatic approach to visualize entropy production, enhancing understanding of heat transfer asymmetries in thermodynamics.

Findings

Highlights the asymmetry in heating and cooling processes

Provides a visual tool for entropy analysis

Enhances comprehension of second-law implications

Abstract

We introduce a natural way of visualizing the entropy production in heat transfer processes between a system and a thermal reservoir. This representation is particularly useful to highlight the asymmetric character of the heating and cooling processes, when they are analyzed from the second-law perspective.