Optimization and Efficiency Studies of Heat Engines: A Review

Abstract

This review aims to study the various theoretical and numerical investigations in the optimization of heat engines. The main focus is to discuss the procedures to derive the efficiency of heat engines under different operating regimes (or optimization criterion) for different models of heat engines such as endoreversible models, stochastic models, low-dissipation models, quantum models etc. Both maximum power and maximum efficiency operational regimes are desirable but not economical so compromise-based criteria have been proposed based on thermo-ecological considerations such as criterion (ecological) and efficient power. The optimization efficiency in each case shows a striking universal behavior in near-equilibrium regime. Further, a comparison of the optimization under different criterion enables to choose a suitable one for the best performance of heat engine.