The heat content of a system is equal to the enthalpy only for a system that is at constant what?
1 Answer
Only for a system at constant pressure... By definition,
We can begin from the first law of thermodynamics
DeltaU = q + w ,where
q andw are the heat flow and work, respectively,
and the relation of the internal energy
DeltaH = DeltaU + Delta(PV) where
P andV are pressure and volume.
When one plugs in the expression for
DeltaH = q + w + Delta(PV)
The common convention is that the work is defined by
Furthermore, we apply the product rule from calculus (plus a bit extra) to see that
DeltaH = q - cancel(PDeltaV + PDeltaV) + VDeltaP + DeltaPDeltaV
As a result, the change in enthalpy is related to the heat flow as:
color(blue)(DeltaH = q + VDeltaP + DeltaPDeltaV)
Clearly, when the pressure is constant, we can see that
DeltaH = q_P ,
if both quantities are in
color(blue)(nDeltabarH = q_P)