IGE Model: An Extension of the Ideal Gas Model to Include Chemical Composition as Part of the Equilibrium State

Abstract

The ideal gas (IG) model is probably the most well-known gas models in engineering thermodynamics. In this paper, we extend the IG model into an ideal gas equilibrium (IGE model) mixture model by incorporating chemical equilibrium calculations as part of the state evaluation. Through a simple graphical interface, users can set the atomic composition of a gas mixture. We have integrated this model into a thermodynamic web portal TEST (http://thermofluids.sdsu.edu/) that contains Java applets for various models for properties of pure substances. In the state panel of the IGE model, the known thermodynamic properties are entered. For a given pressure and temperature, the mixture's Gibbs function is minimized subject to atomic constraints and the equilibrium composition along with thermodynamic properties of the mixture are calculated and displayed. What is unique about this approach is that equilibrium computations are performed in the background, without requiring any major change in the familiar user interface used in other state daemons. Properties calculated by this equilibrium state daemon are compared with results from other established applications such as NASA CEA and STANJAN. Also, two different algorithms, an iterative approach and a direct approach based on minimizing different thermodynamic functions in different situation, are compared.