A new model of a quantum heat engine (QHE) cycle is established, in which the working substance consists of an interacting electrons system. One of our purposes is to test the validity of the second law of thermodynamics by this model, which is more general than the spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model since it would recover the spin model when the on-site Coulomb interaction U is strong enough. On the basis of quantum mechanics and the first law of thermodynamics, we show no violation of the second law of thermodynamics during the cycle. We further study the performance characteristics of the cycle by investigating in detail the optimal relations of efficiency and dimensionless power output. We find that the efficiency of our engine can be expressed as eta = 1 - t (2) (2) /t (2) (1) in the large-U limit, which is valid even for a four sites QHE.