To explain the irreversible thermodynamic processes, the scientists formulated the second law of thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics explains what processes can occur in the universe and what processes cannot happen. One scientist named R. J. E. Clausius (1822-1888) made the following statement:
Naturally, heat moves from high-temperature objects to low-temperature objects; naturally, heat does not proceed from low-temperature object to high-temperature object (Second law of thermodynamics—Clausius’s statement).
Clausius’s statement is one of the special statements of the second law of thermodynamics. It is called special statement because it only applies to one process just, related to heat transfer. Since this statement is not related to other processes, we need a more general statement. The development of a general statement of the second law of thermodynamics is based on the study about heat engine. Therefore, we discuss heat engine first.