Thermodynamics – Can a Refrigerator Produce Positive Net Work Output?

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The Clausius statement of the second law is:

"Heat can never pass from a colder to a warmer body without some other change, connected therewith, occurring at the same time."

This is typically illustrated in a manner similar to the diagram labelled "(a)" below:
Text

Now note that in the quoted Clausius’ statement above, he only states that "some other change" must occur at the same time as the heat flow from cold to hold. He does not say that the change necessarily has to be a positive net work on the device (i.e $W_{net,in}>0$). So in theory, if I am to take the above statement as truth, then surely it should be possible to construct a device (a refrigerator) as shown in the diagram above labelled "(b)"?

That is, a device which transfers heat from a colder body to a hotter body and does a positive net work on the surroundings during the cycle. This clearly seems wrong but it appears to me that it doesn't violate the second law (as it is stated above) and it doesn't violate the first law either since we still have that $\Delta U = 0$ for the cycle. Is this all correct? Is it possible to create a device operating on a cycle which transfers heat from a cold source to a hot source and at the same time does positive net work on its surroundings (i.e. $W_{net,out}>0$)? It seems somewhat intuitive to me that this shouldn't be possible. If it isn't possible, then shouldn't the Clausius statement be updated to say that "Heat can never pass from a colder to a warmer body without a positive net work input into the device causing the heat flow"?

Best Answer

That is, a device which transfers heat from a colder body to a hotter body and does a positive net work on the surroundings during the cycle.

Although this statement of the second law is rather imprecise, the device you describe (which I will call a refrigeration engine) is indeed forbidden by it.

We already know of functioning devices which can take work and convert it to thermal energy, which we can generically call heaters. So, with your refrigeration engine, you could couple it with a heater in the hot reservoir to further increase the heat in the hot reservoir. Then you would wind up with a combined system that violates Clausius’ statement.

Now, since we know that heaters exist, and by Clausius’ statement the combined refrigeration engine/heater cannot exist, we can conclude that the refrigeration engine cannot exist.

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