I am having difficulty with the issue of heat in that I do not understand how heat can be lost.
In talking with my niece who just graduated with her ba I made a flip statement that heat really cannot be lost as such.
That is to say that entropy will drag it down to equilibrium but its not like it gets lost somewhere.
Well she quickly took her steam engine problem they gave her in school and said she argued that same point with her prof and he answered it with something that went like we you have certain mechanical losses.
She argued that all mechanical losses wind up as friction, hence will generate its own heat.
So if anyone is into this and can elaborate on it more than she did I would really appreciate it.
So far I understand that boiler eff runs about 80%, then we have to deal with enthalpy and finally mechanical losses. (I think)
So is there something out there that I can read maybe as I have searched for this type of problem and came up with zippo for actually making some kind of model in my mind as to all the losses.
In frustration I finally asked her if I put in 100,000 btu into a steam engine, (already warmed up and running), then there has to be some kind of a carnot cycle such that all that heat can be accounted for.
In a nutshell it seems if you put in 100,000 btu you should get 100000 btu out in one form or another, either as waste or end product.
Is there a model to estimate or calculate this for either steam or an internal combustion engine? Once we run this engine how much heat energy is left to do work? I know thats like 5 questions isnt it?
