ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to provide an overview of the fundamental concepts of thermodynamics, covering both physical properties and phase equilibrium. While chemical engineering thermodynamics deals mostly with computation of physical properties and of equilibrium states of fluids involved in chemical processes, engineering thermodynamics handles applications of the thermodynamic principles in the field of energy production or use, processes and machineries, deep cooling and liquefaction, compression of gases, and so on. The key thermodynamic notions described hereafter are used in further chapters (e.g. for minimization of entropy production, exergy analysis, pinch analysis, and process integration). A more detailed treatment of thermodynamics can be found in dedicated textbooks by Kyle (1999), Smith et al. (2005), Sandler (2006), Moran et al. (2011), and Elliott and Lira (2012).
The descriptions of the major methods for estimating fundamental properties are available in the works of Reid et al. (1987) and Poling et al. (2001), while Gmehling et al.’s works (1997, 2012) focus on thermodynamics applied in process simulation.
