Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics: Transport and Rate Processes in Physical, Chemical and Biological Systems

This fully updated and revised fifth edition of Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics: Transport and Rate Processes in Physical, Chemical, and Biological Systems emphasizes the unifying role of thermodynamics and their use in transport processes and chemical reactions in physical, chemical, and biological systems. This reorganized new edition provides thermodynamical approaches for foundational understanding of natural phenomena with multiscale chemical, physical, and biological systems, consisting of interactive processes leading to self-organized dissipative structures, fluctuations, and instabilities. This edition also emphasizes thermodynamic approaches, tools, and techniques, including energy analysis, process intensification, and artificial intelligence, for undertaking sustainable engineering.

This book will be an excellent resource for graduate students and researchers in the fields of engineering, chemistry, physics, energy, biotechnology, and biology, as well as those whose work involves understanding the evolution of nonequilibrium systems, information theory, stochastic processes, and sustainable engineering. This may also be useful to professionals working in irreversibility, dissipative structures, process exergy analysis and thermoeconomics, digitalization in manufacturing, and data processing.

• Highlights the fundamentals of equilibrium thermodynamics and phase equilibria
• Expands the theory of nonequilibrium thermodynamics and its use in coupled reactions and transport processes in various time and space scales of physical, chemical, and biological systems
• Discusses self-organized dissipative structures, quantum thermodynamics, information theory, and stochastic approaches in thermodynamic analysis, including fluctuation theories and molecular motors
• Includes new content on sustainable engineering with thermodynamics tools and techniques, including energy analysis, process intensification, and artificial intelligence
• Presents many fully solved examples and numerous practice problems
• Offers instructor resources containing a solution manual that can be obtained from the authors

Dr. Yaşar Demirel earned his PhD degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Birmingham, UK in 1981. He carried out research and scholarly work at the University of Delaware between 1999 and 2001. He worked at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg as a visiting professor between 2002 and 2006. Currently, he is a professor in the Department of Chemical Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. He has accumulated broad teaching and research experience over the years in diverse fields of engineering. Dr. Demirel authored and co-authored 11 books, four book chapters, and more than 170 research papers. The fourth edition of Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics was published in 2019. The third edition of the book titled “Energy: Production, Conversion, Storage, Conservation, and Coupling” was published in 2021. He co-authored the book “Sustainable Engineering” to be published in early 2023 by CRC Press, Taylor & Francis. He has obtained several awards and scholarships and presented invited seminars.

Dr. Vincent Gerbaud obtained a MSc in Chemical Engineering in 1992 from UMASS, USA and earned his PhD degree in Chemical Engineering in 1996 from the Institut National Polytechnique de Toulouse, France. He joined the French National Scientific Research Center CNRS at Laboratoire de Génie Chimique in Toulouse in 1998 where was promoted research director in 2012. He was the Head of the French GDR CNRS Thermodynamic group from 2014 to 2020. His research field concerns modelling and simulation in process system engineering with a special focus on bridging molecular scales to macro and mega scales systems. Building upon Edgar Morin's paradigm of "la pensée complexe" and combining process system and model-driven engineering concepts with equilibrium and nonequilibrium thermodynamic principles, he addresses with a holistic approach the modelling of complex systems in areas related to engineering connected with macro economy, environmental and social sciences. Dr. Gerbaud co-authored the fourth edition of Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics with Dr. Demirel, and 6 book chapters, 100 research papers and his work led to 6 specialized software. He has contributed to promote innovative teaching and learning in engineering classes based on activities of e-learning, writing reflective portfolio and designing mind maps among others tools.