Define the coefficient of performance of a refrigerator in words. Can it be greater than unity?
> Is there any way to increase the efficiency of a Carnot heat engine other than by increasing TH or decreasing TL?
> What are the characteristics of all heat engines?
> Somebody claims to have developed a new reversible heat-engine cycle that has the same theoretical efficiency as the Carnot cycle operating between the same temperature limits. Is this a reasonable claim?
> Somebody claims to have developed a new reversible heat-engine cycle that has a higher theoretical efficiency than the Carnot cycle operating between the same temperature limits. How do you evaluate this claim?
> Is it possible to develop (a) an actual and (b) a reversible heat-engine cycle that is more efficient than a Carnot cycle operating between the same temperature limits? Explain.
> What are the two statements known as the Carnot principles?
> The force generated by a spring is given by F = kx, where k is the spring constant and x is the deflection of the spring. The spring of Fig. P2–70 has a spring constant of 8 kN/cm. The pressures are P1 = 5000 kPa, P2 = 10,000 kPa, and P
> Can there be any heat transfer between two bodies that are at the same temperature but at different pressures?
> What are the four processes that make up the Carnot cycle?
> Is a reversible expansion or compression process necessarily quasi-equilibrium? Is a quasi-equilibrium expansion or compression process necessarily reversible? Explain.
> Why does a non-quasi-equilibrium expansion process deliver less work than the corresponding quasi-equilibrium one?
> Why does a non-quasi-equilibrium compression process require a larger work input than the corresponding quasi-equilibrium one?
> Show that processes that use work for mixing are irreversible by considering an adiabatic system whose contents are stirred by turning a paddle wheel inside the system (e.g., stirring a cake mix with an electric mixer).
> Show that processes involving rapid chemical reactions are irreversible by considering the combustion of a natural gas (e.g., methane) and air mixture in a rigid container.
> Consider the process of baking potatoes in a conventional oven. Can the hot air in the oven be treated as a thermal energy reservoir? Explain.
> How do you distinguish between internal and external irreversibilities?
> A block slides down an inclined plane with friction and no restraining force. Is this process reversible or irreversible? Justify your answer.
> A cold canned drink is left in a warmer room where its temperature rises as a result of heat transfer. Is this a reversible process? Explain.
> A vertical piston–cylinder device contains a gas at a pressure of 100 kPa. The piston has a mass of 10 kg and a diameter of 14 cm. Pressure of the gas is to be increased by placing some weights on the piston. Determine the local atmosph
> Why are engineers interested in reversible processes even though they can never be achieved?
> Refrigerant-134a enters the condenser of a residential heat pump at 800 kPa and 35°C at a rate of 0.018 kg/s and leaves at 800 kPa as a saturated liquid. If the compressor consumes 1.2 kW of power, determine (a) the COP of the heat pump and (b
> A house that was heated by electric resistance heaters consumed 1200 kWh of electric energy in a winter month. If this house were heated instead by a heat pump that has an average COP of 2.4, determine how much money the homeowner would have saved that m
> Consider an office room that is being cooled adequately by a 12,000 Btu/h window air conditioner. Now it is decided to convert this room into a computer room by installing several computers, terminals, and printers with a total rated power of 8.4 kW. The
> A household refrigerator runs one-fourth of the time and removes heat from the food compartment at an average rate of 800 kJ/h. If the COP of the refrigerator is 2.2, determine the power the refrigerator draws when running.
> A refrigerator is used to cool water from 23 to 5°C in a continuous manner. The heat rejected in the condenser is 570 kJ/min and the power is 2.65 kW. Determine the rate at which water is cooled in L/min and the COP of the refrigerator. The specific heat
> Water enters an ice machine at 55°F and leaves as ice at 25°F. If the COP of the ice machine is 2.4 during this operation, determine the required power input for an ice production rate of 28 lbm/h. (169 Btu of energy needs to be removed from each lbm of
> An experimentalist claims to have raised the temperature of a small amount of water to 150°C by transferring heat from high pressure steam at 120°C. Is this a reasonable claim? Why? Assume no refrigerator or heat pump is used in the process.
> Reconsider Prob. 7–48. Using appropriate software, determine the power input required by the air conditioner to cool the house as a function of air conditioner EER ratings in the range 5 to 15. Discuss your results and include represent
> When a man returns to his well-sealed house on a summer day, he finds that the house is at 35°C. He turns on the air conditioner, which cools the entire house to 20°C in 30 min. If the COP of the air-conditioning system is 2.8, dete
> A vertical, frictionless piston–cylinder device contains a gas at 180 kPa absolute pressure. The atmospheric pressure outside is 100 kPa, and the piston area is 25 cm2. Determine the mass of the piston.
> A household refrigerator that has a power input of 450 W and a COP of 1.5 is to cool 5 large watermelons, 10 kg each, to 8°C. If the watermelons are initially at 28°C, determine how long it will take for the refrigerator to cool them. The watermelons ca
> An air conditioner removes heat steadily from a house at a rate of 750 kJ/min while drawing electric power at a rate of 5.25 kW. Determine (a) the COP of this air conditioner and (b) the rate of heat transfer to the outside air
> A heat pump with a COP of 1.4 is to produce a 100,000 Btu/h heating effect. How much power does this device require, in hp?
> A heat pump has a COP of 1.7. Determine the heat transferred to and from this heat pump when 50 kJ of work is supplied.
> Determine the COP of a heat pump that supplies energy to a house at a rate of 8000 kJ/h for each kW of electric power it draws. Also, determine the rate of energy absorption from the outdoor air.
> Determine the COP of a refrigerator that removes heat from the food compartment at a rate of 5040 kJ/h for each kW of power it consumes. Also, determine the rate of heat rejection to the outside air.
> A food refrigerator is to provide a 15,000-kJ/h cooling effect while rejecting 22,000 kJ/h of heat. Calculate the COP of this refrigerator.
> An automotive air conditioner produces a 1-kW cooling effect while consuming 0.75 kW of power. What is the rate at which heat is rejected from this air conditioner?
> Describe an imaginary process that satisfies the second law but violates the first law of thermodynamics.
> A food freezer is to produce a 5-kW cooling effect, and its COP is 1.3. How many kW of power will this refrigerator require for operation?
> The average temperature of the atmosphere in the world is approximated as a function of altitude by the relation Tatm = 288.15 − 6.5z where Tatm is the temperature of the atmosphere in K and z is the altitude in km with z = 0 at sea level. Determine the
> Show that the Kelvin–Planck and the Clausius expressions of the second law are equivalent.
> What is the Clausius expression of the second law of thermodynamics?
> A heat pump is a device that absorbs energy from the cold outdoor air and transfers it to the warmer indoors. Is this a violation of the second law of thermodynamics? Explain.
> In a refrigerator, heat is transferred from a lower temperature medium (the refrigerated space) to a higher temperature one (the kitchen air). Is this a violation of the second law of thermodynamics? Explain.
> A refrigerator has a COP of 1.5. That is, the refrigerator removes 1.5 kWh of energy from the refrigerated space for each 1 kWh of electricity it consumes. Is this a violation of the first law of thermodynamics? Explain.
> A heat pump that is used to heat a house has a COP of 2.5. That is, the heat pump delivers 2.5 kWh of energy to the house for each 1 kWh of electricity it consumes. Is this a violation of the first law of thermodynamics? Explain.
> Define the coefficient of performance of a heat pump in words. Can it be greater than unity?
> What is the difference between a refrigerator and an air conditioner?
> Describe an imaginary process that satisfies the first law but violates the second law of thermodynamics.
> The average body temperature of a person rises by about 2°C during strenuous exercise. What is the rise in the body temperature in (a) K, (b) °F, and (c) R during strenuous exercise?
> What is the difference between a refrigerator and a heat pump?
> Repeat Prob. 7–26 for a simple payback period of three years instead of five years. Data from Prob. 7-26: A country needs to build new power plants to meet the increasing demand for electric power. One possibility is to build coal-fired power plants, wh
> Reconsider Prob. 7–26. Using appropriate software, investigate the price of coal for varying simple payback periods, plant construction costs, and operating efficiency. Data from Prob. 7-26: A country needs to build new power plants to meet the increasi
> A country needs to build new power plants to meet the increasing demand for electric power. One possibility is to build coal-fired power plants, which cost $1300 per kW to construct and have an efficiency of 40 percent. Another possibility is to build cl
> An Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) power plant built in Hawaii in 1987 was designed to operate between the temperature limits of 86°F at the ocean surface and 41°F at a depth of 2100 ft. About 13,300 gpm of cold seawater was to be pumped from deep
> A coal-burning steam power plant produces a net power of 300 MW with an overall thermal efficiency of 32 percent. The actual gravimetric air–fuel ratio in the furnace is calculated to be 12 kg air/kg fuel. The heating value of the coal is 28,000 kJ/kg.
> Solar energy stored in large bodies of water, called solar ponds, is being used to generate electricity. If such a solar power plant has an efficiency of 3 percent and a net power output of 150 kW, determine the average value of the required solar energy
> An automobile engine consumes fuel at a rate of 22 L/h and delivers 55 kW of power to the wheels. If the fuel has a heating value of 44,000 kJ/kg and a density of 0.8 g/cm3, determine the efficiency of this engine.
> A steam power plant with a power output of 150 MW consumes coal at a rate of 60 tons/h. If the heating value of the coal is 30,000 kJ/kg, determine the overall efficiency of this plant.
> A heat engine that propels a ship produces 500 Btu/lbm of work while rejecting 300 Btu/lbm of heat. What is its thermal efficiency?
> A house is losing heat at a rate of 1800 kJ/h per °C temperature difference between the indoor and the outdoor temperatures. Express the rate of heat loss from this house per (a) K, (b) °F, and (c) R difference between the indoor and the outdoor temperat
> Describe an imaginary process that violates both the first and the second laws of thermodynamics.
> A heat engine with a thermal efficiency of 45 percent rejects 500 kJ/kg of heat. How much heat does it receive?
> A 600-MW steam power plant, which is cooled by a nearby river, has a thermal efficiency of 40 percent. Determine the rate of heat transfer to the river water. Will the actual heat transfer rate be higher or lower than this value? Why?
> A heat engine has a heat input of 3 × 104 Btu/h and a thermal efficiency of 40 percent. Calculate the power it will produce, in hp.
> A steam power plant receives heat from a furnace at a rate of 280 GJ/h. Heat losses to the surrounding air from the steam as it passes through the pipes and other components are estimated to be about 8 GJ/h. If the waste heat is transferred to the coolin
> A heat engine has a total heat input of 1.3 kJ and a thermal efficiency of 35 percent. How much work will it produce?
> Consider a pan of water being heated (a) by placing it on an electric range and (b) by placing a heating element in the water. Which method is a more efficient way of heating water? Explain.
> Show that COPHP = COPR + 1 when both the heat pump and the refrigerator have the same QL and QH values.
> Calculate and plot the thermal efficiency of a completely reversible heat engine as a function of the source temperature up to 2000 R with the sink temperature fixed at 500 R.
> A Carnot heat engine is operating between a source at TH and a sink at TL. If we wish to double the thermal efficiency of this engine, what should the new source temperature be? Assume the sink temperature is held constant.
> The boiling temperature of water decreases by about 3°C for each 1000-m rise in altitude. What is the decrease in the boiling temperature in (a) K, (b) °F, and (c) R for each 1000-m rise in altitude?
> Cold water at 10°C enters a water heater at the rate of 0.02 m3/min and leaves the water heater at 50°C. The water heater receives heat from a heat pump that receives heat from a heat source at 0°C. (a) Assuming the water
> A heat pump supplies heat energy to a house at the rate of 140,000 kJ/h when the house is maintained at 25°C. Over a period of one month, the heat pump operates for 100 hours to transfer energy from a heat source outside the house to inside the house. Co
> Replacing incandescent lights with energy-efficient fluorescent lights can reduce the lighting energy consumption to one-fourth of what it was before. The energy consumed by the lamps is eventually converted to heat, and thus switching to energy-efficien
> A homeowner is trying to decide between a high efficiency natural gas furnace with an efficiency of 97 percent and a ground-source heat pump with a COP of 3.5. The unit costs of electricity and natural gas are $0.115/kWh and $0.75/therm (1 therm = 105,50
> Baseboard heaters are basically electric resistance heaters and are frequently used in space heating. A homeowner claims that her 5-year-old baseboard heaters have a conversion efficiency of 100 percent. Is this claim in violation of any thermodynamic la
> Reconsider Prob. 7–128. Using appropriate software, investigate the effect of the heat pump COP on the yearly operation costs and the number of years required to break even. Let the COP vary from 2 to 5. Plot the payback period against
> A typical electric water heater has an efficiency of 95 percent and costs $350 a year to operate at a unit cost of electricity of $0.11/kWh. A typical heat pump–powered water heater has a COP of 3.3 but costs about $800 more to install.
> The drinking water needs of a production facility with 20 employees is to be met by a bubbler type water fountain. The refrigerated water fountain is to cool water from 22 to 8°C and supply cold water at a rate of 0.4 L per hour per person. He
> The maximum flow rate of a standard shower head is about 3.5 gpm (13.3 L/min) and can be reduced to 2.75 gpm (10.5 L/min) by switching to a low-flow shower head that is equipped with flow controllers. Consider a family of four, with each person taking a
> The cargo space of a refrigerated truck whose inner dimensions are 12 m × 2.3 m × 3.5 m is to be precooled from 25°C to an average temperature of 5°C. The construction of the truck is such that a transmissi
> Hyperthermia of 5°C (i.e., 5°C rise above the normal body temperature) is considered fatal. Express this fatal level of hyperthermia in (a) K, (b) °F, and (c) R.
> Consider a Carnot heat-pump cycle executed in a steady-flow system in the saturated liquid vapor mixture region using refrigerant-134a flowing at a rate of 0.18 kg/s as the working fluid. It is known that the maximum absolute temperature in the cycle is
> An old gas turbine has an efficiency of 21 percent and develops a power output of 6000 kW. Determine the fuel consumption rate of this gas turbine, in L/min, if the fuel has a heating value of 42,000 kJ/kg and a density of 0.8 g/cm3.
> A heat engine operates between two reservoirs at 800 and 20°C. One-half of the work output of the heat engine is used to drive a Carnot heat pump that removes heat from the cold surroundings at 2°C and transfers it to a house maintained at 22°C. If the h
> Consider two Carnot heat engines operating in series. The first engine receives heat from the reservoir at 1400 K and rejects the waste heat to another reservoir at temperature T. The second engine receives this energy rejected by the first one, converts
> Consider a Carnot heat-engine cycle executed in a steady-flow system using steam as the working fluid. The cycle has a thermal efficiency of 30 percent, and steam changes from saturated liquid to saturated vapor at 275°C during the heat addition process.
> Are the efficiencies of all the work-producing devices, including the hydroelectric power plants, limited by the Kelvin–Planck statement of the second law? Explain.
> Reconsider Prob. 7–118. Using appropriate software, investigate the effect of the network input on the minimum pressure. Let the work input vary from 10 to 30 kJ. Plot the minimum pressure in the refrigeration cycle as a function of network input, and di
> Consider a Carnot refrigeration cycle executed in a closed system in the saturated liquid–vapor mixture region using 0.96 kg of refrigerant-134a as the working fluid. It is known that the maximum absolute temperature in the cycle is 1.2 times the minimum
> Reconsider Prob. 7–116. Using appropriate software, investigate the effect of the network output on the required temperature of the steam during the heat rejection process. Let the work output vary from 40 to 60 kJ. Data from Prob. 7-116: Consider a Car
> Consider a Carnot heat-engine cycle executed in a closed system using 0.025 kg of steam as the working fluid. It is known that the maximum absolute temperature in the cycle is twice the minimum absolute temperature, and the net work output of the cycle i
> The average atmospheric pressure on earth is approximated as a function of altitude by the relation Patm = 101.325 (1 − 0.02256z)5.256, where Patm is the atmospheric pressure in kPa and z is the altitude in km with z = 0 at sea level. Determine the appro
> A heat pump with a COP of 2.8 is used to heat an airtight house. When running, the heat pump consumes 5 kW of power. If the temperature in the house is 7°C when the heat pump is turned on, how long will it take for the heat pump to raise the temperature
> A refrigeration system is to cool bread loaves with an average mass of 350 g from 30 to –10°C at a rate of 1200 loaves per hour with refrigerated air at –30°C. Taking the average specific and latent heats of bread to be 2.93 kJ/kg·°C and 109.3 kJ/kg, res
> A refrigeration system uses a water-cooled condenser for rejecting the waste heat. The system absorbs heat from a space at 25°F at a rate of 21,000 Btu/h. Water enters the condenser at 65°F at a rate of 1.45 lbm/s. The COP of the system is estimated to b
> A Carnot heat pump is used to heat and maintain a residential building at 75°F. An energy analysis of the house reveals that it loses heat at a rate of 2500 Btu/h per °F temperature difference between the indoors and the outdoors. For an outdoor temperat
> An air-conditioning system is used to maintain a house at a constant temperature of 20°C. The house is gaining heat from outdoors at a rate of 20,000 kJ/h, and the heat generated in the house from the people, lights, and appliances amounts to 8000 kJ/h.
