Protocol Online logo
Top : New Forum Archives (2009-): : Chemistry

Managing Gibbs free energy - (Mar/08/2019 )

Hi

How can Gibbs free energy be managed so that you don't dissipate all that heat?

Thanks

-electros-

You can't realistically. Gibbs free energy is a potential reversible work in a thermodynamic process - the heat loss is part of the entropy/enthalpy of the system.

 

The exothermic heat loss from a reaction could potentially be used to speed up an endothermic reaction, but this is difficult to couple in a laboratory setting. Plants and other organisms have developed mechanisms to do this through evolution, and we can mimic or isolate these systems in the lab.

-bob1-