Real gases – as opposed to a perfect or ideal gas – exhibit properties that cannot be explained entirely using the ideal gas law. To understand the behaviour of real gases, the following must be taken into account:
- compressibility effects;
- variable specific heat capacity;
- van der Waals forces;
- non-equilibrium thermodynamic effects;
- issues with molecular dissociation and elementary reactions with variable composition.
For most applications, such a detailed analysis is unnecessary, and the ideal gas approximation can be used with reasonable accuracy. On the other hand, real-gas models have to be used near the condensation point of gases, near critical points, at very high pressures, and in other less usual cases.
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