Thermodynamic Processes 2. Salah Belaadi

      Foreword 1

      Circular Economy and Engineering

       Circular economy and engineering: process thermodynamics as an essential chemical engineering tool for the design and control of the processes encountered in the factory of the future within the framework of Industry 4.0

      Process engineering involves the sciences and technologies that optimally transform matter and energies into products required by a consumer and into nonpolluting wastes. Today, it takes part in the framework of circular economy and engineering (monitoring of products and processes from cradle to grave), and the optimal transformations of matter and energies must be carried out to design the factory of the future, taking into account the emergence of Industry 4.0 and the voluminous amount of data (Big Data movement).

      Modern (green) process engineering is deliberately oriented toward process intensification (i.e., producing much more and better, with use of much less resources). This involves a physical-chemistry multidisciplinary and multiscale approach to modelling and computer simulation, in terms of time and space, from the atomic and molecular scales. This involves the equipment and the reactor scales, up to the scales of the overall factory (i.e., the design of a refinery, a chemical, a textile or a cement complex plant from Schrödinger equations).

      To meet this multidisciplinary and multiscale approach, the preponderant and irreplaceable concept and background of chemical thermodynamics appears in all its splendour, and more generally, this concerns the thermodynamics of processes for the multiscale control of these processes.

It is clear that studies that discuss thermodynamics of processes must cover chemical thermodynamics (open or closed systems with or without chemical reaction, phase equilibrium) and the energetics of processes (thermal cycles, heat pump, degraded energy, exergy). However, these studies must also be illustrated with examples of real multiscale physicochemical applications. This will prepare or help or contribute to the design, the development and the control of the processes that will be encountered in the factory of the future, by means of methodologies and techniques to obtain reliable thermodynamic data that will contribute to the abundance of data (Big Data/Industry 4.0).

      A big thank you to Professor Salah Belaadi, leading expert in education and research in the field of thermodynamics of processes, for offering such an instructional and didactic book, whose chapters mainly present exercises oriented towards industrial applications.

      This book on thermodynamics and energetics of processes is a guide (a vademecum), which I am personally convinced will be of great benefit to a large number of university teachers and researchers, and engineers and technicians active in today’s economy sector, as well in the very near future.

      Jean-Claude CHARPENTIER

      Former director of ENSIC Nancy and ESCPE Lyon, France

      Former president of the European Federation of Chemical Engineering

      Laboratoire Réactions et Génie des Procédés

      CNRS/ENSIC/University of Lorraine

      Foreword 2

      Thermodynamics is a universal science that is of great interest in all its applications. The premises of thermodynamics are not always easy to understand, in the eyes of students nor in those of seasoned researchers, nor are the numerous developments that result from it.

      Nature is complex and the scientist must be humble with regard to what he/she sees. He/she must scrupulously observe, carefully reflect, attempt to interpret and undertake modeling, a theory which will be deemed valid only until a new observation, or a new experiment comes to question them. From this perspective, it is necessary for the educator to show conviction, insight and passion in order to best convey the thirst for effort and for accomplishing work, to promote vocations and to discover talents.

      Professor Salah Belaadi has spent many years teaching thermodynamics. He has enriched his courses with many exercises entirely dedicated to understanding this science and potential applications for the industrial world. Over the years, he has been able to select the most interesting and relevant exercises. The collection he proposes today is therefore an assortment of carefully selected topics for thermodynamic reflection and culture.

      I wish him the success he deserves and I hope that a very large number of readers will enjoy this content.

      Dominique RICHON

      Emeritus Professor at Mines ParisTech

      Former director of Thermodynamics and Phases Equilibrium Laboratory

      Preface

      The aim of this book is to reduce apprehension toward thermodynamics and to make it more familiar to those who have to use it, both on completion of apprenticeships, training and retraining, as well as to those conducting research and reflection on the evolution of processes at the time of transformation of matter and/or energy.

      The need to write this book was apparent to me, after so many years of teaching at various university levels, after the unequivocal statement: the difficulty encountered by students – or engineers working in companies or research groups – to solve concrete problems in thermodynamics comes from the fact that the manuals, which cover applications of the concepts of this discipline, are too didactic.

      Hence why I propose an original approach for this book - to use thermodynamics as a resolution tool – indispensable for mastering a process of energy transformation and/or matter using one or more thermodynamic concepts. Thus, this book is not structured according to the progression of the teaching of the concepts of thermodynamics, but rather according to the evolution of the scientific difficulty compared to the state of the thermodynamic system studied from closed systems to energy processes. Thermodynamics is above all “the science of the evolution of the states of a system, whatever it is”.

      The book derives its interest from the very definition of this science, accepted by the scientific community for a long time as the “mother of sciences”. Indeed, everyone agrees: “If thermodynamics does not solve everything, without it, we will not solve anything.” This is all the more true for the physicochemical processes of matter and energy transformation.

      Salah BELAADI

      January 2020