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Natural Heat Engine

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The Nature of Motive Force

Part of the book series: Heat and Mass Transfer ((HMT))

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Abstract

In this chapter, we study the thermoelectric generator from the perspective of a heat engine, which in turn falls into a class of thermal insulation systems. We employ the method of finite-time thermodynamics to take into account the essential features of a realistic heat engine. We directly look into the geometrical shape and structure of the building blocks of each thermoelectric module of the cascaded assembly that eventually causes a better global performance.

The principles of thermodynamics occupy a special place among the laws of Nature. For this there are two reasons: in the first place, their validity is subject only to limitations which, though not, perhaps themselves negligibly small, are at any rate minimal in comparison with many other laws of Nature; and in the second place, there is no natural process to which they cannot be applied.

W. Nerst

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology Durgapur, Durgapur, 713209, West Bengal, India

    Achintya Kumar Pramanick

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  1. Achintya Kumar Pramanick
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Correspondence to Achintya Kumar Pramanick .

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Pramanick, A.K. (2014). Natural Heat Engine. In: The Nature of Motive Force. Heat and Mass Transfer. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-54471-2_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-54471-2_5

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