Related papers: Equilibrium Chemical Engines
We want to understand whether and to which extent the maximal (Carnot) efficiency for heat engines can be reached at a finite power. To this end we generalize the Carnot cycle so that it is not restricted to slow processes. We show that for…
Heat engines are fundamental physical objects to develop nonequilibrium thermodynamics. The thermodynamic performance of the heat engine is determined by the choice of cycle and time-dependence of parameters. Here, we propose a systematic…
Advantages of quantum effects in several technologies, such as computation and communication, have already been well appreciated, and some devices, such as quantum computers and communication links, exhibiting superiority to their classical…
The fundamental issue in the energetic performance of power plants, working both as traditional fuel engines and as combined cycle turbine (gas-steam), lies in quantifying the internal irreversibilities which are associated with the working…
We analyze an autonomous micro-engine as a closed quantum mechanical system, including the work it performs and the fuel it consumes. Our model system shows by example that it is possible to transfer energy steadily and spontaneously…
We study the energetics of isothermal ratchets which are driven by a chemical reaction between two states and operate in contact with a single heat bath of constant temperature. We discuss generic aspects of energy transduction such as…
Understanding how biological homochirality emerged remains a challenge for the researchers interested in the origin of life. During the last decades, stable non-racemic steady states of nonequilibrium chemical systems have been discussed as…
Combining two disparate lines of thought like thermodynamics and quantum mechanics yields surprising results. The resulting idea of quantum thermodynamic engines holds promise for harvesting novel sources of energy of purely quantum origin,…
Incorporating time into thermodynamics allows addressing the tradeoff between efficiency and power. A qubit engine serves as a toy model to study this tradeoff from first principles, based on the quantum theory of open systems. We study the…
A simple tight-coupling model of a molecular chemical engine is proposed. The efficiency of the chemical engine and its average velocity can be explicitly calculated. The diffusion constant is evaluated approximately using the fluctuation…
The efficiency of cyclic heat engines is limited by the Carnot bound. This bound follows from the second law of thermodynamics and is attained by engines that operate between two thermal baths under the reversibility condition whereby the…
The thermodynamic uncertainty relation provides an inequality relating any mean current, the associated dispersion and the entropy production rate for arbitrary non-equilibrium steady states. Applying it here to a general model of a…
Similarly to gear systems in vehicles, most chemical reaction networks (CRNs) involved in energy transduction have at their disposal multiple transduction pathways, each characterized by distinct efficiencies. We conceptualize these…
Interesting effects arise in cyclic machines where both heat and ergotropy transfer take place between the energising bath and the system (the working fluid). Such effects correspond to unconventional decompositions of energy exchange…
We study the efficiency at maximum power, $\eta_m$, of irreversible quantum Carnot engines (QCEs) that perform finite-time cycles between a hot and a cold reservoir at temperatures $T_h$ and $T_c$, respectively. For QCEs in the reversible…
Differences between the thermodynamic behavior of the three-level amplifier (a quantum heat engine based on a thermally pumped laser) and the classical Carnot cycle are usually attributed to the essentially quantum or discrete nature of the…
We employ the recently developed framework of the energetics of stochastic processes (called `stochastic energetics'), to re-analyze the Carnot cycle in detail, taking account of fluctuations, without taking the thermodynamic limit. We find…
The introduction of the quantum analogue of a Carnot engine based on a bath comprising of particles with a small amount of coherence initiated an active line of research on the harnessing of different quantum resources for the enhancement…
We consider the optimization of a finite-time Carnot engine characterized by small dissipations. We bound the power with a simple inequality and show that the optimal strategy is to perform small cycles around a given working point, which…
Motor enzymes catalyze chemical reactions, like the hydrolysis of ATP, and in the process they also perform work. Recent studies indicate that motor enzymes perform work with specific intermediate steps in their catalyzed reactions,…