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An irreversible process increases the total entropy of the system and its surroundings. The second law of thermodynamics can be used to determine whether a hypothetical process is reversible or not. Intuitively, a process is reversible if there is no dissipation. For example, Joule expansion is irreversible because initially the system is not ...
Extended irreversible thermodynamics is a branch of non-equilibrium thermodynamics that goes outside the restriction to the local equilibrium hypothesis. The space of state variables is enlarged by including the fluxes of mass, momentum and energy and eventually higher order fluxes. The formalism is well-suited for describing high-frequency ...
These equations also demonstrate the deep connection between transport phenomena and thermodynamics, a connection that explains why transport phenomena are irreversible. Almost all of these physical phenomena ultimately involve systems seeking their lowest energy state in keeping with the principle of minimum energy.
Work is a process of transferring energy to or from a system in ways that can be described by macroscopic mechanical forces acting between the system and its surroundings. The work done by the system can come from its overall kinetic energy, from its overall potential energy, or from its internal energy.
While free energy change describes the stability of products relative to reactants, the rate of any reaction is defined by the energy of the transition state relative to the starting material. Depending on these parameters, a reaction can be favorable or unfavorable, fast or slow and reversible or irreversible, as shown in figure 8.
If the process of converting one type of energy into another takes place inside a thermodynamic system, for example, in chemical reactions, in electric or pneumatic motors, when one solid body rubs against another, then the processes of energy release or absorption will occur, and the thermodynamic system will always tend to a non-equilibrium ...
An isentropic process is customarily defined as an idealized quasi-static reversible adiabatic process, of transfer of energy as work. Otherwise, for a constant-entropy process, if work is done irreversibly, heat transfer is necessary, so that the process is not adiabatic, and an accurate artificial control mechanism is necessary; such is ...
In a cyclic process, therefore, the entropy of the system at the beginning of the cycle must equal to the entropy at the end of the cycle (because the entropy is a state function), =, regardless of whether the process is reversible or irreversible.