Thermodynamics and Energy Conversion

Abstract

This textbook grew out of lecture notes for the thermodynamics courses offered in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Victoria. Writing my own notes forced me to thoroughly consider how, in my subjective view, engineering thermodynamics should be taught. At the same time I aimed for a concise presentation, with the material of three courses delivered on about 600 pages.1 My hope in publishing this book is that students of thermodynamics might find the chosen approach accessible, and maybe illuminating, and discover thermodynamics and its interesting applications for themselves. Probably the biggest difference to standard texts is when and how the second law of thermodynamics and its central quantity, the entropy, are introduced. The second law describes irreversible processes like friction and heat transfer, which are related to a loss in work. For instance, work that is needed to overcome friction in a generator cannot be converted into electricity, hence there is a loss. Accordingly, it should be one of the main goals of a thermal engineer to reduce irreversibility as much as possible. Indeed, the desire to understand and quantify irreversible losses is one of the central themes of the present treatment, it is touched upon in almost all chapters.