Introduction to Chemical Thermodynamics

This book is aimed at students in the fields ofmolecular or life science and technology. It introduces thermodynamics as a predictive tool and discusses the spontaneity of chemical reactions and the power that can be obtained from fuel cells. The emphasis of the first part is on applications of the Second Law of Thermodynamics on (bio)chemical processes and the Gibbs energy is introduced as the predictive quantity. The First Law of Thermodynamics is introduced merely to manage the energy resources. The last chapter of the first part deals with the efficiency of processes where the role of entropy is discovered. The second part is devoted to chemical and physical equilibria. The various relations that exist for equilibria are exposed as universally related to the Gibbs energy. Ideal mixing relations and ideal solution relations are constantly being used as a simplified approach to the real situation. In the last chapter of this part, the deviations from ideality are assessed and the magnitude of the fugacity and activity coefficients is critically discussed. The book is also aimed at chemical engineering students. They need to know more about processes and their efficiencies. Therefore the third part of the book is devoted to distributed processes. In the first chapter some important aspects of formal thermodynamics are discussed, in particular the role of entropy to identify equilibrium and stability. The second chapter of this part continues this discussion and introduces the concept of internal entropy production. To discuss these two issues, systems are subdivided into two parts that are not necessarily in equilibrium: the system is inhomogeneous. The last chapter of this part explains how fully inhomogeneous and flowing systems can be dealt with and how entropy production can be managed. The fourth – and new – part of the book contains applications to macromolecular systems where solution properties, binding phenomena and membranes are discussed. This part has been added to provide material for a more advanced course. The topics dealt with in these chapters are relatively modern and appropriate references to the relevant literature are made. I have tried to present this material from a few unifying concepts so as to demonstrate the analogy between the various treatments in the current literature. Also, the relation to colloid science – even though dealing more with particles than with macromolecules - is discussed.