A Rational Approach to Reversibility via Carnot’s Lost-Work

Abstract

The reversibility definition emerging from Carnot’s ‘lost-work’ notion or, equivalently, from considerations of optimal efficiency and lack of dissipation is here qualified as a rational alternative to that which based on Planck’s constant total-entropy criterion resorts to either a sequence of equilibrium states or the action of infinitesimal forces for the definition of the reversible path.