RESEARCH ARTICLE
Entropy of Irreversible Processes Across a Boundary
Jurgen Michael Honig*, Ross Hoehn
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2011Volume: 5
First Page: 1
Last Page: 6
Publisher ID: TOCENGJ-5-1
DOI: 10.2174/1874123101105010001
Article History:
Received Date: 20/12/2010Revision Received Date: 10/02/2011
Acceptance Date: 03/03/2011
Electronic publication date: 22/4/2011
Collection year: 2011
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
A novel method for determining the entropy associated with irreversible processes has been provided, differing from the conventional theory of irreversible thermodynamics. It permits the direct relation of heat and work transfers in irreversible processes to those in reversible changes, in terms of measurable properties. The same technique is applied to the construction of thermodynamic state functions that are no longer limited to reversible phenomena. The results are then used to construct line integrals for the contribution of irreversible processes to the entropy associated with the flow of heat, work, and matter across a junction. Specific examples are provided to illustrate the procedure; they relate to changes of temperature and volume and to cycling of systems interacting with a reservoir via a thin barrier.
