It's important to keep in mind that the combustion process occurs in a very brief period of time. Due to a variety of conditions that include mixture density, homogeneity, temperature, fuel ...

One famous limit of thermodynamics is that heat engines, like steam engines and internal combustion engines, must be less efficient than a Carnot heat engine (a heat engine cycle designed by French ...

“We’ve developed the world’s smallest steam engine, or to be more precise the smallest Stirling engine, and found that the machine really does perform work,” said Clemens Bechinger, a physicist at the ...

One of the basic truths learned in college thermodynamics courses is that no heat-activated cycle can be devised that is more efficient than a Carnot cycle operating between the same temperature ...

Scientists are working on a heat engine that consists of just a single ion. Such a nano-heat engine could be far more efficient than, for example, a car engine or a coal-fired power plant. Scientists ...

Power boost: a quantum heat engine in synthetic diamond. (Courtesy: Jonas Becker) Physicists have in recent years built a number of microscopic heat engines to investigate how the laws of ...