No more engine trade-off: Chinese-led design breaks power, efficiency deadlock
Research paves way for potentially revolutionary advances in energy conversion technologies that could lead to more efficient heat engines
Published last month in Physical Review Letters, their research broke the traditional barrier requiring engines to sacrifice efficiency for power, paving the way for potentially revolutionary advances in energy conversion technologies that could lead to more efficient heat engines.
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The findings could also help scientists enhance tiny biological machines, such as enzymes, by carefully controlling their temperature, and enable artificial cell factories to produce medicine, biofuels and other materials more efficiently.
By designing a simplified engine model with high-energy level degeneracy – where many microscopic states work together – the researchers were able to leverage collective effects and overcome the traditional efficiency-power trade-off, wrote the authors from Beijing Normal University and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, among others.
Their study showed that when many small parts of a system worked together, they could convert energy more efficiently, offering new possibilities for future technology.
Heat engines convert heat into mechanical work by exploiting a temperature difference between a hot source and a cold sink. From steam engines to power plants, they all generate motion or electricity by harnessing thermal energy.
In a car engine, for example, fuel combustion heats gases, causing them to expand and push pistons, generating motion. However, a major limitation is the trade-off between efficiency and power output – engines cannot maximise both at the same time.