This text presents the conceptual and technical developments of the subject without unduly compromising on either the historical or logical perspective. It also covers the tremendous range of scientifically deep and technologically revolutionary applications of thermodynamics. The text explains how thermodynamics evolved from a few basic laws that were amazingly successful and with tremendous range, without even knowing about the atomic structure of matter or the laws governing the behavior of atoms.

An introductory textbook presenting the key concepts and applications of thermodynamics, including numerous worked examples and exercises.

Environmental engineering, is by its very nature, interdisciplinary and it is a challenge to develop courses that will provide students with a thorough broad-based curriculum that includes every aspect of the environmental engineering profession. Environmental engineers perform a variety of functions, most critical of which are process design for waste treatment or pollution prevention, fate and transport modeling, green engineering, and risk assessment. Chemical thermodynamics and chemical kinetics, the two main pillars of physical chemistry, are two of the many subjects that are crucial to environmental engineering. Based on the success of the successes of previous editions, Principles of Environmental Thermodynamics and Kinetics, Fourth Edition, provides an overarching view of the applications of chemical thermodynamics and kinetics in various aspects of the field of environmental science and engineering. Written by experts in the field, this new edition offers an improved logical progression of the text with principles and applications, includes new case studies with current relevant environmental events and their relationship to thermodynamics and kinetics, and adds examples and problems for the updated environmental events. It also includes a comprehensive analysis of green engineering with relation applications, updated appendices, and an increased number of thermodynamic and kinetic data for chemical species. While it is primarily intended for undergraduate students at the junior/senior level, the breadth and scope of this book make it a valuable resource for introductory graduate courses and a useful reference for environmental engineers.

Although nearly three years have elapsed since the publication of this work in Hungarian, it was decided to publish the English edition in the same form as the original, apart from some minor modifications. Since, recent research has been directed to the development of an exact theory of non-linear irreversible processes; we suggest to readers interested in similar tasks - such as the continuation of this boo- that they should study some new publications: "On the most general form of the Thermodynamic Integral Principle", Z. phys. Chem. 239 (1968) 133, and particularly: "On the Governing Principle of Dissi pative Processes", Ann. Phys. 7 (1969) 23. I have to thank my wife and Mr. W.F.HEINZ for the translation of the very concise Hungarian text. I also wish to express my gratitude to Dr. L.KARADI and Mr. Gy. VINCZE for reading the typescript with such care and to Mrs. A. R6sZLER, who typed the manuscript with great patience. I am deeply indebted to Professor ISTVAN SZABO for making this edition available so quickly and for including my work in the "En gineering Science Library". Finally, I would like to express my thanks to Springer-Verlag for the excellent edition and to the editorial staff for their readiness to meet my wishes.

Thermodynamics is used increasingly in ecology to understand the system properties of ecosystems because it is a basic science that describes energy transformation from a holistic view. In the last decade, many contributions to ecosystem theory based on thermodynamics have been published, therefore an important step toward integrating these theories and encouraging a more wide spread use of them is to present them in one volume. An ecosystem consists of interdependent living organisms that are also interdependent with their environment, all of which are involved in a constant transfer of energy and mass within a general state of equilibrium or dis-equilibrium. Thermodynamics can quantify exactly how "organized" or "disorganized" a system is - an extremely useful to know when trying to understand how a dynamic ecosystem is behaving. A part of the Environmental and Ecological (Math) Modeling series, Thermodynamics and Ecology is a book-length study - the first of its kind - of the current thinking on how an ecosystem can be explained and predicted in terms of its thermodynamical behavior. After the introductory chapters on the fundamentals of thermodynamics, the book explains how thermodynamic theory can be specifically applied to the "measurement" of an ecosystem, including the assessment of its state of entropy and enthalpy. Additionally, it will show economists how to put these theories to use when trying to quantify the movement of goods and services through another type of complex living system - a human society.

Thermodynamics is not the oldest of sciences. Mechanics can make that claim. Thermodynamicsisaproductofsomeofthegreatestscienti?cmindsofthe19thand 20th centuries. But it is suf?ciently established that most authors of new textbooks in thermodynamics ?nd it necessary to justify their writing of yet another textbook. I ?nd this an unnecessary exercise because of the centrality of thermodynamics as a science in physics, chemistry, biology, and medicine. I do acknowledge, however, that instruction in thermodynamics often leaves the student in a confused state. My attempt in this book is to present thermodynamics in as simple and as uni?ed a form as possible. As teachers we identify the failures of our own teachers and attempt to correct them. Although I personally acknowledge with a deep gratitude the appreciation for thermodynamics that I found as an undergraduate, I also realize that my teachers did not convey to me the sweeping grandeur of thermodynamics. Speci?cally the s- plicity and the power that James Clerk Maxwell found in the methods of Gibbs were not part of my undergraduate experience. Unfortunately some modern authors also seem to miss this central theme, choosing instead to introduce the thermodynamic potentials as only useful functions at various points in the development.