Engineering Thermodynamics

As mentioned previously, thermodynamics is the branch of science that deals with the interconversion of energy and work. Engineers, at a very basic level, are individuals who deal with engines—machinery and processes—to obtain useful work for the benefit of the society. This work is obtained at the expense of energy, and engineers need to have fundamental understanding of the concepts that govern the relationship between energy and work. Engineering Thermodynamics teaches students the laws of thermodynamics and applications of these laws to various systems. Students also learn about the thermodynamic quantities (enthalpy, entropy, free energy, etc.), as mentioned earlier, and the changes in these quantities in various types of processes. The process may be isothermal (occurring at constant temperature), isobaric (at constant pressure), or isochoric (at constant volume). Engineers construct power conversion cycles consisting of combinations of these and other processes. These concepts are then applied to the analysis of energy or power conversion cycles that involve a cyclic sequence of different processes. The course also covers macroscopic analysis of heat transport processes. An overview of the Engineering Thermodynamics course is shown in Figure 3.16.

Figure 3.16 Overview of the Engineering Thermodynamics course.

The concepts covered in Engineering Thermodynamics are prerequisites for courses such as Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics and Transport Phenomena. It can be seen that the topics covered in the Engineering Thermodynamics course are more general in nature than those in the Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics course. Although some chemical engineering programs conform to this arrangement of the two courses, several other programs may simply have two chemical engineering thermodynamics courses, with the topical areas corresponding roughly to those described previously. If the first engineering thermodynamics course is taught by the faculty in the chemical engineering program with the enrollment restricted primarily to the chemical engineering majors, then typically it is named Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics I. If the course is offered by any faculty member in the college of engineering, with enrollment open to any engineering student, it typically appears as Engineering Thermodynamics. Regardless of the specific arrangement, the two courses function to provide discussion of fundamental concepts of engineering thermodynamics and their application to chemical engineering systems.