Question

How do you increase thermal efficiency?

Answer 1

1. The thermal efficiency of heat engine is the percentage of heat converted into useful work.
2. The efficiency of best heat engine is even lower than $50\%$ and often far below due to the wasting amount of energy released as entropy in the surrounding environment.
3. The formula for thermal efficiency is
4. $\mathrm{\eta }=1-\left(\raisebox{1ex}{${\mathrm{T}}_2$}\!\left/ \!\raisebox{-1ex}{${\mathrm{T}}_1$}\right.\right)$
5. T₂ is sink temperature
6. T₁ is the source temperature.
7. Therefore the thermal efficiency can be increased either by reducing the sink temperature or by increasing the source temperature.

Therefore, the above ways clearly explains the thermal efficiency increment.