Introduction to Power Plant Engineering

CHAPTER 2

Review of Thermodynamics

2.1 Introduction

Thermodynamics rests on two fundamental laws:

• The First law is associated with the conservation of energy. This law cannot be proved; its validity depends upon the fact that neither it, nor any of its consequences have ever been contradicted in daily life.
• There is nothing implicit in the first law about the directionality of a process. For example, we know that heat will be transferred spontaneously from a body of higher temperature to one at lower temperature. The First law would not be violated if heat transfer occurs in the reverse direction; but this simply does not occur. Here lies the important of the second law.

We will discuss in some detail both of these laws from the engineering ...