Isentropic Process - Background

Background

The Second law of thermodynamics states that,

where is the amount of energy the system gains by heating, is the temperature of the system, and is the change in entropy. The equal sign will hold for a reversible process. For a reversible isentropic process, there is no transfer of heat energy and therefore the process is also adiabatic. For an irreversible process, the entropy will increase. Hence removal of heat from the system (cooling) is necessary to maintain a constant internal entropy for an irreversible process in order to make it isentropic. Thus an irreversible isentropic process is not adiabatic.

For reversible processes, an isentropic transformation is carried out by thermally "insulating" the system from its surroundings. Temperature is the thermodynamic conjugate variable to entropy, thus the conjugate process would be an isothermal process in which the system is thermally "connected" to a constant-temperature heat bath.

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