Fundamental Closed Processes Based Thermal Cycle Structures

The conventional thermal cycles (those that convert heat into useful work based on the addition of
heat from a thermal source and systematic rejection fulfilling the Kelvin-Plank statement, towards a
heat sink of lower temperature than the source) have been improved until the technical limit
achievable with all the techniques available to the state of the art. Even so, it has not been possible to
exceed efficiencies of 62% in the best case of conventional combined cycles. All these thermal cycles
satisfy two fundamental statements: