ABSTRACT
Non-equilibrium thermodynamics has found many diverse applications in physics and chemistry. To classify these applications, the different irreversible phenomena were grouped according to their ‘tensor properties’ [112]. Our task does not include an account of known conditions for non-equilibrium thermodynamics. Below we will consider only on its limitations related to the description of the properties of small systems. To this end, we discuss the question of a self-consistent description of non-equilibrium and equilibrium processes and the concept of Gibbs’ ‘passive forces’. We also recall that all the results of non-equilibrium thermodynamics are obtained under the condition of local equilibrium realization, and the question of its correspondence with the strongly non-equilibrium states of the system remains open.
