Thermodynamic Interactions

An Exploration into Material, Physiological and Territorial Atmospheres. Energy and sustainability is a complex topic that needs to address simultaneously core disciplinary values and ideas that come from other fields of knowledge. The interconnection between the environment and its climate, its built structures and the human body requires overlying architecture with other disciplines such as meteorology, thermodynamics or physiology to engage them in a holistic way. The book is structured in three blocks—Territorial Atmospheres, Material Atmospheres and Physiological Atmospheres—which present three distinct and successive realms at which thermodynamic exchanges are taking place. Territorial Atmospheres deals with the thermodynamic interaction between the environment and its built structures. Material Atmospheres focuses on the interaction between a building and the climate it generates. And lastly, Physiological Atmospheres centers on the interaction between indoor ambient and the physiologi-cal and psychological effects on human beings. Each of the blocks has a coeditor: Silvia Benedito for Territorial Atmospheres; Iñaki Ábalos for Material Atmospheres and Philippe Rahm for Physiological Atmospheres, who will work together with the editor defining the context of the book.

The interconnection between the environment and its climate, its built structures and the human body requires overlying architecture with other disciplines such as meteorology, thermodynamics or physiology to engage them in a holistic way. The book is structured in three blocks--Territorial Atmospheres, Material Atmospheres and Physiological Atmospheres--which present three distinct and successive realms at which thermodynamic exchanges are taking place. Territorial Atmospheres deals with the thermodynamic interaction between the environment and its built structures. Material Atmospheres focuses on the interaction between a building and the climate it generates. And lastly, Physiological Atmospheres centers on the interaction between indoor ambient and the physiological and psychological effects on human beings.

Properties of systems with long range interactions are still poorly understood despite being of importance in most areas of physics. The present volume introduces and reviews the effort of constructing a coherent thermodynamic treatment of such systems by combining tools from statistical mechanics with concepts and methods from dynamical systems. Analogies and differences between various systems are examined by considering a large range of applications, with emphasis on Bose--Einstein condensates. Written as a set of tutorial reviews, the book will be useful for both the experienced researcher as well as the nonexpert scientist or postgraduate student.

This book presents the understanding of how the different forms of regulatory mechanisms, like birth and death, competition, consumption and the like, result in changes in the stability and dynamics of ecological systems. It deals with a profound and unique insight into the mathematical richness of basic ecological models. Organised into eight chapters, the book discusses the models of mathematical ecology, the dynamical models of single-species system in a polluted environment, the dynamical behaviour of different nonautonomous two species systems in a polluted environment, the influence of environmental noise in Gompertzian and logistic growth models, stability behaviour in randomly fluctuating versus deterministic environments of two interacting species, stochastic analysis of a demographic model of urbanization and stability behaviour of a social group by means of loop analysis, thermodynamic criteria of stability and stochastic criteria of stability. The book will be useful to the researchers and graduate students who wish to pursue research in mathematical ecology.

Providing valuable insight on physical behavior of polymer solutions, intermolecular interactions, and the molecular nature of mixtures, each volume in this one-of-a-kind handbook brings together reliable, easy-to-use entries, references, tables, examples, and appendices on experimental data from hundreds of primary journal articles, dissertations,

Thermodynamics is an indispensable tool for developing a large and growing fraction of new polymers and polymer blends. These two volumes show the researcher how thermodynamics can be used to rank polymer pairs in order of immiscibility, including the search for suitable chemical structure of compatibilizers. Because of the great current commercial interest in this most dynamic sector of the polymer industry, there is high interest in studying their physical and mechanical properties, their structures, and the processes of their formation and manufacture. These Books are dedicated to Analysis of the Thermodynamics of Polymer Blends. Thermodynamic behavior of blends determines the compatibility of the components, their morphological features, rheological behavior, and microphase structures. As a result, the most important physical and mechanical characteristics of blends can be identified. The information in these two volumes will be useful to all those involved in polymer research, development, analysis and advanced process engineering.

Thermodynamics of Phase Equilibria in Food Engineering is the definitive book on thermodynamics of equilibrium applied to food engineering. Food is a complex matrix consisting of different groups of compounds divided into macronutrients (lipids, carbohydrates, and proteins), and micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals). The quality characteristics of food products associated with the sensorial, physical and microbiological attributes are directly related to the thermodynamic properties of specific compounds and complexes that are formed during processing or by the action of diverse interventions, such as the environment, biochemical reactions, and others. In addition, in obtaining bioactive substances using separation processes, the knowledge of phase equilibria of food systems is essential to provide an efficient separation, with a low cost in the process and high selectivity in the recovery of the desired component. This book combines theory and application of phase equilibria data of systems containing food compounds to help food engineers and researchers to solve complex problems found in food processing. It provides support to researchers from academia and industry to better understand the behavior of food materials in the face of processing effects, and to develop ways to improve the quality of the food products. Presents the fundamentals of phase equilibria in the food industry Describes both classic and advanced models, including cubic equations of state and activity coefficient Encompasses distillation, solid-liquid extraction, liquid-liquid extraction, adsorption, crystallization and supercritical fluid extraction Explores equilibrium in advanced systems, including colloidal, electrolyte and protein systems