the use of solar collectors in combination with heat pipes is rapidly growing in recent years.heat pipes, as heat transfer components, have undeniable advantages in comparison with other alternatives. the most important advantage is their high rate of heat transfer at minor temperature differences. although there have been numerous studies on the heat analysis or first thermodynamic analysis of...

A thermodynamic model of a compartment fire with one state variable (corresponding to the dimensionless temperature of the smoke layer) based on energy conservation is studied from the point of view of the Second Law (exergy analysis). To define the exergy rate of the process, a novel concept of mean thermodynamic temperature is introduced for the smoke layer. This parameter is the equivalent o...

This article discusses several diverse “zero-point” notions, ranging from early classical blackbody radiation analysis, to astrophysical and cosmological considerations now being contemplated. The now commonly accepted quantum mechanical meaning of “zero-point” is compared with the early historical thermodynamic meaning. Subtle points are then reviewed that were implicitly imposed in the early ...

In the later stages of drug design projects, accurately predicting relative binding affinities of chemically similar compounds to a biomolecular target is of utmost importance for making decisions based on the ranking of such compounds. So far, the extensive application of binding free energy approaches has been hampered by the complex and time-consuming setup of such calculations. We introduce...

A method for sampling efficiently the free energy landscape of a complex system with respect to some given collective variables is proposed. Inspired by metadynamics [A. Laio, M. Parrinello, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 99 (2002) 12562], we introduce an extended system where the collective variables are treated as dynamical ones and show that this allows to sample the free energy landscape of thes...

Thermodynamic analysis of metabolic networks has recently generated increasing interest for its ability to add constraints on metabolic network operation, and to combine metabolic fluxes and metabolite measurements in a mechanistic manner. Concepts for the calculation of the change in Gibbs energy of biochemical reactions have long been established. However, a concept for incorporation of cross...

heat recuperation is often used to improve the overall cycle efficiency of gas turbines. however, generally in small- scale gas turbines, it has a negative effect on turbine inlet temperature, pressure ratio and pressure drops, and thus decreases the overall cycle efficiency. in this paper, a thermodynamic model is performed to evaluate recovered heat as a function of heat exchanger effectivene...

At low temperatures the configurational phase space of a macroscopic complex system (e.g., a spin-glass) of N ∼ 10 interacting particles may split into an exponential number Ωs ∼ exp(const × N) of ergodic sub-spaces (thermodynamic states). It is usually assumed that the equilibrium collective behavior of such a system is determined by its ground thermodynamic states of the minimal free-energy d...

The Gibbs free energy of mixing dissipated when fresh river water flows into the sea can be harnessed for sustainable power generation. Pressure retarded osmosis (PRO) is one of the methods proposed to generate power from natural salinity gradients. In this study, we carry out a thermodynamic and energy efficiency analysis of PRO work extraction. First, we present a reversible thermodynamic mod...