ABSTRACT
Before approaching the kinetics of a process, the thermodynamics of the system undergoing change needs to be understood since it is the thermodynamics that drives the direction of the process. It is assumed that readers of this book will have had at least an introductory course in thermodynamics. However, rarely does anyone get a firm grasp on thermodynamic concepts the first time exposed to them. Therefore, the second part of this introductory chapter is a summary of some important thermodynamic principles. Clearly, not everything included in a first course on chemical thermodynamics can be presented in detail here, since there would not be room to discuss kinetics if it were. Therefore, only several of the principles used in later models of kinetic processes are briefly summarized.
