Maximum power of a•combined-cycle isothermal chemical engine

Abstract

A chemical engine processes mass flow to convert the differences in chemical potentials into work. An isothermal endoreversible chemical engine, in which the sole irreversibility is finite-rate mass transfer, is modeled in this paper. The expression of maximum power from the model using the analogous method of finite-time thermodynamics for a combined-cycle heat engine is derived. An important result shows that the efficiency at maximum power output is half of the maximum efficiency for chemical and heat engines.