Thermodynamic Relations
Thora Buckner
In thermodynamics, the fundamental thermodynamic relation are four fundamental equations which demonstrate how four important thermodynamic quantities depend on variables that can be controlled and measured experimentally. Thus, they are essentially equations of state, and using the fundamental equations, experimental data can be used to determine sought-after quantities like G (Gibbs free energy) or H (enthalpy).[1] The relation is generally expressed as a microscopic change in internal energy in terms of microscopic changes in entropy, and volume for a closed system in thermal equilibrium in the following way.
This is only one expression of the fundamental thermodynamic relation. It may be expressed in other ways, using different variables (e.g. using thermodynamic potentials). For example, the fundamental relation may be expressed in terms of the enthalpy H as
where δ Q \displaystyle \delta Q and δ W \displaystyle \delta W are infinitesimal amounts of heat supplied to the system by its surroundings and work done by the system on its surroundings, respectively.
This equation has been derived in the case of reversible changes. However, since U, S, and V are thermodynamic state functions that depends on only the initial and final states of a thermodynamic process, the above relation holds also for non-reversible changes. If the composition, i.e. the amounts n i \displaystyle n_i of the chemical components, in a system of uniform temperature and pressure can also change, e.g. due to a chemical reaction, the fundamental thermodynamic relation generalizes to:
Here the X j \displaystyle X_j are the generalized forces corresponding to the external parameters x j \displaystyle x_j . (The negative sign used with pressure is unusual and arises because pressure represents a compressive stress that tends to decrease volume. Other generalized forces tend to increase their conjugate displacements.)
The above derivation uses the first and second laws of thermodynamics. The first law of thermodynamics is essentially a definition of heat, i.e. heat is the change in the internal energy of a system that is not caused by a change of the external parameters of the system.
However, the second law of thermodynamics is not a defining relation for the entropy. The fundamental definition of entropy of an isolated system containing an amount of energy E \displaystyle E is:
where Ω ( E ) \displaystyle \Omega \left(E\right) is the number of quantum states in a small interval between E \displaystyle E and E + δ E \displaystyle E+\delta E . Here δ E \displaystyle \delta E is a macroscopically small energy interval that is kept fixed. Strictly speaking this means that the entropy depends on the choice of δ E \displaystyle \delta E . However, in the thermodynamic limit (i.e. in the limit of infinitely large system size), the specific entropy (entropy per unit volume or per unit mass) does not depend on δ E \displaystyle \delta E . The entropy is thus a measure of the uncertainty about exactly which quantum state the system is in, given that we know its energy to be in some interval of size δ E \displaystyle \delta E .
The fundamental assumption of statistical mechanics is that all the Ω ( E ) \displaystyle \Omega \left(E\right) states at a particular energy are equally likely. This allows us to extract all the thermodynamical quantities of interest. The temperature is defined as:
This definition can be derived from the microcanonical ensemble, which is a system of a constant number of particles, a constant volume and that does not exchange energy with its environment. Suppose that the system has some external parameter, x, that can be changed. In general, the energy eigenstates of the system will depend on x. According to the adiabatic theorem of quantum mechanics, in the limit of an infinitely slow change of the system's Hamiltonian, the system will stay in the same energy eigenstate and thus change its energy according to the change in energy of the energy eigenstate it is in.
The first term is intensive, i.e. it does not scale with system size. In contrast, the last term scales as the inverse system size and thus vanishes in the thermodynamic limit. We have thus found that:
Thermodynamics is expressed by a mathematical framework of thermodynamic equations which relate various thermodynamic quantities and physical properties measured in a laboratory or production process. Thermodynamics is based on a fundamental set of postulates, that became the laws of thermodynamics.
During the latter half of the 19th century, physicists such as Rudolf Clausius, Peter Guthrie Tait, and Willard Gibbs worked to develop the concept of a thermodynamic system and the correlative energetic laws which govern its associated processes. The equilibrium state of a thermodynamic system is described by specifying its "state". The state of a thermodynamic system is specified by a number of extensive quantities, the most familiar of which are volume, internal energy, and the amount of each constituent particle (particle numbers). Extensive parameters are properties of the entire system, as contrasted with intensive parameters which can be defined at a single point, such as temperature and pressure. The extensive parameters (except entropy) are generally conserved in some way as long as the system is "insulated" to changes to that parameter from the outside. The truth of this statement for volume is trivial, for particles one might say that the total particle number of each atomic element is conserved. In the case of energy, the statement of the conservation of energy is known as the first law of thermodynamics.
A thermodynamic system is in equilibrium when it is no longer changing in time. This may happen in a very short time, or it may happen with glacial slowness. A thermodynamic system may be composed of many subsystems which may or may not be "insulated" from each other with respect to the various extensive quantities. If we have a thermodynamic system in equilibrium in which we relax some of its constraints, it will move to a new equilibrium state. The thermodynamic parameters may now be thought of as variables and the state may be thought of as a particular point in a space of thermodynamic parameters. The change in the state of the system can be seen as a path in this state space. This change is called a thermodynamic process. Thermodynamic equations are now used to express the relationships between the state parameters at these different equilibrium state.
The concept which governs the path that a thermodynamic system traces in state space as it goes from one equilibrium state to another is that of entropy. The entropy is first viewed as an extensive function of all of the extensive thermodynamic parameters. If we have a thermodynamic system in equilibrium, and we release some of the extensive constraints on the system, there are many equilibrium states that it could move to consistent with the conservation of energy, volume, etc. The second law of thermodynamics specifies that the equilibrium state that it moves to is in fact the one with the greatest entropy. Once we know the entropy as a function of the extensive variables of the system, we will be able to predict the final equilibrium state. (Callen 1985)
Thermodynamic systems are typically affected by the following types of system interactions. The types under consideration are used to classify systems as open systems, closed systems, and isolated systems.
The first and second law of thermodynamics are the most fundamental equations of thermodynamics. They may be combined into what is known as fundamental thermodynamic relation which describes all of the changes of thermodynamic state functions of a system of uniform temperature and pressure. As a simple example, consider a system composed of a number of k different types of particles and has the volume as its only external variable. The fundamental thermodynamic relation may then be expressed in terms of the internal energy as:
By the principle of minimum energy, the second law can be restated by saying that for a fixed entropy, when the constraints on the system are relaxed, the internal energy assumes a minimum value. This will require that the system be connected to its surroundings, since otherwise the energy would remain constant.
By the principle of minimum energy, there are a number of other state functions which may be defined which have the dimensions of energy and which are minimized according to the second law under certain conditions other than constant entropy. These are called thermodynamic potentials. For each such potential, the relevant fundamental equation results from the same Second-Law principle that gives rise to energy minimization under restricted conditions: that the total entropy of the system and its environment is maximized in equilibrium. The intensive parameters give the derivatives of the environment entropy with respect to the extensive properties of the system.
After each potential is shown its "natural variables". These variables are important because if the thermodynamic potential is expressed in terms of its natural variables, then it will contain all of the thermodynamic relationships necessary to derive any other relationship. In other words, it too will be a fundamental equation. For the above four potentials, the fundamental equations are expressed as:
Just as with the internal energy version of the fundamental equation, the chain rule can be used on the above equations to find k+2 equations of state with respect to the particular potential. If Φ is a thermodynamic potential, then the fundamental equation may be expressed as:
Only one equation of state will not be sufficient to reconstitute the fundamental equation. All equations of state will be needed to fully characterize the thermodynamic system. Note that what is commonly called "the equation of state" is just the "mechanical" equation of state involving the Helmholtz potential and the volume:
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