This book serves as an essential guide for students pursuing molecular or life sciences and technology, focusing on the role of thermodynamics as a tool for prediction. It explores the spontaneity of chemical reactions and the energy potential from fuel cells. The first section emphasizes applying the Second Law of Thermodynamics to (bio)chemical processes, introducing Gibbs energy as a key predictive measure. The First Law of Thermodynamics is briefly covered to highlight energy management. The section concludes by examining process efficiency and the concept of entropy.

The second section addresses chemical and physical equilibria, revealing their universal connection to Gibbs energy. It frequently employs ideal mixing and solution relations to simplify real-world scenarios. The final chapter evaluates deviations from ideality and scrutinizes fugacity and activity coefficients.

Aimed also at chemical engineering students, the third section delves into distributed processes. It begins with discussing formal thermodynamics, focusing on entropy’s role in equilibrium and stability. The next chapter introduces internal entropy production, considering systems that are subdivided and inhomogeneous. The final chapter details handling fully inhomogeneous, flowing systems and managing entropy production.

A new, fourth section introduces applications to macromolecular systems, discussing solution properties, binding phenomena, and membranes. Added for advanced courses, this section connects modern topics to existing literature, presenting them through unifying concepts and exploring their relation to colloid science.

Contents:

Preface

Part I – Processes in Chemistry and Biochemistry
1. Overview
2. Spontaneity of processes
3. Available work
4. Energy conservation
5. Efficiency and entropy

Part II – Chemical and Physical Equilibria
6. General aspects of equilibria
7. Phase equilibria of pure substances
8. Capillary phenomena and adsorption
9. Phase equilibria of mixtures
10. Mixtures and colligative properties
11. Non-ideal mixtures

Part III – Distributed Processes
12. Fundamentals of chemical thermodynamics
13. Irreversible processes
14. Flow processes

Part IV – Macromolecular Systems
15. Macromolecular solutions
16. Macromolecular binding equilibria
17. Membranes

Index

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