Hello. Thank you very much in advance for taking the time to read through my question. I have set up a carnot cycle which involves injecting a fluid underground where it gets heated, rises back to the surface, and is expanded directly through an ‘80% efficient turbine’. The fluid is then cooled so it can be re-injected. Do I also need to multiply the turbine power output (80%*enthalpy difference*mass flow rate) by the Carnot efficiency? What is the difference between the Carnot cycle and the Carnot efficiency?
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If anyone helps I’ll buy them a freddo at inflated prices
The Carnot cycle is just a theoretically ideal cycle to describe heat engines in general, which is what your example is.
The Carnot Efficiency is the efficiency of a given Carnot cycle, and is the theoretical limit of any heat engine, which is just 1-(Tc/Th) where Tc and Th are the temperatures of the “cold” and “hot” sides of the reaction. The turbine efficiency would be a separate inefficiency of the system, so in this idealized case you’d calculate the Carnot efficiency and multiply it by the turbine efficiency.
In reality, though, you’re going to have tons of *other* inefficiencies. The Carnot Efficiency isn’t a realistic target, but instead is the absolute limit of the system as permitted by physics; even if all of your other components were operating at 100% efficiency, Carnot still puts a hard limit on the system.
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