ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on individual processes with the objective of assessing their performance. It discusses calculation of the change of entropy for a system as well as the rate of change of entropy in a control volume. By evaluating the change in entropy of an ideal process and the actual process, a comparison of their performance can be carried out and means to improve the performance of the latter may be proposed. Since entropy is a property, its value at a state, by definition, does not depend on the process by which the system arrived at that state. Perhaps, the most popular statement regarding entropy is that it is a measure of the disorder in the system. This interpretation comes from a microscopic perspective and for that reason, it is not possible to corroborate the statement within the framework of the macroscopic approach.
