An exploration for the macroscopic physical meaning of entropy

Science in China Series E: Technological Sciences - Tập 53 - Trang 1809-1816 - 2010
Jing Wu1, ZengYuan Guo2
1College of Energy and Power Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, China
2Key Laboratory for Thermal Science and Power Engineering of Ministry of Education, School of Aerospace, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

Tóm tắt

The macroscopic physical meaning of entropy is analyzed based on the exergy (availability) of a combined system (a closed system and its environment), which is the maximum amount of useful work obtainable from the system and the environment as the system is brought into equilibrium with the environment. The process the system experiences can be divided in two sequent sub-processes, the process at constant volume, which represents the heat interaction of the system with the environment, and the adiabatic process, which represents the work interaction of the system with the environment. It is shown that the macroscopic physical meaning of entropy is a measure of the unavailable energy of a closed system for doing useful work through heat interaction. This statement is more precise than those reported in prior literature. The unavailability function of a closed system can be defined as T 0 S and p 0 V in volume constant process and adiabatic process, respectively. Their changes, that is, Δ(T 0 S) and Δ(p 0 V) represent the unusable parts of the internal energy of a closed system for doing useful work in corresponding processes. Finally, the relation between Clausius entropy and Boltzmann entropy is discussed based on the comparison of their expressions for absolute entropy.

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