Free Energy and Exergy
The amount of useful work which may be extracted from a thermodynamic system is determined by the second law of thermodynamics. Under many practical situations this can be represented by the thermodynamic availability, or Exergy, function. Two important cases are: in thermodynamic systems where the temperature and volume are held constant, the measure of useful work attainable is the Helmholtz free energy function; and in systems where the temperature and pressure are held constant, the measure of useful work attainable is the Gibbs free energy.
Read more about this topic: Work (thermodynamics)
Famous quotes containing the words free and/or energy:
“These are our grievances which we have thus laid before his majesty with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people, claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“His eloquence was of every kind, and he excelled in the argumentative as well as in the declamatory way. But his invectives were terrible, and uttered with such energy of diction, and stern dignity of action and countenance, that he intimidated those who were the most willing and the best able to encounter him. Their arms fell out of their hands, and they shrunk under the ascendant which his genius gained over theirs.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)