Remundo wrote:obelix39 wrote:I do not think I am mistaken in saying that all the losses which cause a drop in yield are thermal, whether mechanical friction, heating of electric cables by the passage of current, etc. ... During a production of potential mechanical energy, whether by raising a mass to take advantage of gravity, compressing air to take advantage of the pressing force, or rotating a mass at high speed to take advantage of its inertial energy, etc. ... If we recover all of the dissipated thermal energy, we obtain a yield of 100%, is that correct?
it depends on how you count the energy and what you want to do with it. Numerically yes, the energy is conserved, so if you are the losses + the mechanical work recovered, you will find everything that has been supplied to the machine
To stay on topic (Calculations on the cycle of compressed air for an engine), if we compress air in order to run a compressed air engine, we produce about 65% of mechanical force in the form of compressed air stored in a tank, and 35% of heat is produced, of which 94% can be recovered (this is what is done in industry) for heating, hot water production, hot air , etc ... Even if the energies produced are different, from the moment they are used, they are not losses but rather "useful" energy. We can therefore compress air using 97% of the starting energy. I find that pretty good! The fact of not recovering the heat during the compression makes the use of compressed air not very profitable, and this is the case I believe with Guy Nègre's car.
It remains to be seen the performance of the engine ...