Heat balance

An application of the first law of thermodynamics to a process in which any work terms are
negligible.

For a closed system, one that always consists of the same material, the first law is Q + W = ΔE,
where Q is the heat supplied to the system, W is the work done on the system, and ΔE is the
increase in energy of the material forming the system. It is convenient to treat ΔE as the sum of
changes in mechanical energy, such as kinetic energy and potential energy in a gravitational
field, and of internal energy ΔU that depends on changes in the thermodynamic state of the
material. Because the rates at which any changes occur are usually of interest, heat balances are
often written in terms of heat flow rates (heat per unit time), sometimes denoted by a dot over the
symbol, , so that for a process with negligible work, kinetic energy and potential energy terms, ,
the rate of change of internal energy with time.

Often it is more convenient to apply the first law or a heat balance to an open system, a fixed
region or control volume across the boundaries of which materials may travel and inside which
they may accumulate, such as a building, an aircraft engine, or a section of a chemical process
plant. Then the first law is expressed by the equation below, where is the rate of doing shaft work

on the system; is the mass flow rate of any stream entering or leaving the control volume; h is the
enthalpy per unit mass; c is the velocity; gz is the gravitational potential for each stream at the
point of crossing the boundary of the control volume; and E is the energy of all material inside the
control volume. When conditions inside the control volume do not change with time, although they
need not be spatially uniform, dE/dt = 0, and the balance equation is known as the steady-flow
energy equation.

Enthalpy is a thermodynamic property defined by h = u + pv, where u is the specific internal

energy (enthalpy per unit mass), p the pressure, and v the specific volume. It is used, along with
shaft work, because the derivation of the first-law equation for a control volume from the more
fundamental equation for a closed system involves work terms pv that are not available for use
outside the control volume. Changes in enthalpy occur because of changes in temperature,
pressure, physical state (for example, from liquid to vapor), and changes in chemical state. See
Enthalpy, Thermodynamic principles, Thermodynamic processes

McGraw-Hill Concise Encyclopedia of Physics. © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Warning! The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be
outdated or ideologically biased.
Heat Balance

a comparison of the heat received and expended (both usefully expended and lost) in various
thermal processes. Heat balances are used in engineering for the analysis of thermal processes
occurring in, for example, steam boilers, furnaces, and heat engines. A heat balance may be
expressed in units of energy, such as joules or calories, or in percent of the total amount of heat
per unit output, per hour of operation, per time period (cycle), or per kilogram of material used. In
scientific research, heat balances are employed to solve many problems in, for example,
astrophysics, geophysics, chemistry, and biology.

A heat balance is calculated on the basis of the enthalpies of the substances taking part in a
process and the heats of the corresponding chemical reactions. For complex processes,
especially in such areas as metallurgy and chemical engineering, the calculation of a heat
balance precedes the calculation of a material balance, that is, a comparison of the masses of the
input and output substances in the process. Here, the heat balance of a facility is often obtained
as the sum of the heat balances of the pieces of equipment making up the facility. A distinction is
made between rated heat balances and experimental heat balances, which are obtained from
thermal testing data.

Figure 1. Heat balance of a motor vehicle engine: (a) heat expended for useful purposes, (b) heat lost with exhaust
gases, (c) heat lost to coolant, (d) other heat losses

A heat balance may be expressed in the form of an equation, with one side giving the sum of the
amounts of input heat and the other side giving the amounts of heat used or lost. Heat balances
may also be expressed in the form of a table or a diagram (Figure 1). The heat balance of a
steam boiler, for example, can be expressed by the following equation:

Here, is the heat of combustion of the fuel, Qf is the enthalpy of the fuel, Qa is the enthalpy of
the air, Q1 is the neat transferred to the working medium, Q2 is the heat lost with the outgoing
gases, Q3 and Q4 are the heat losses owing to chemical and mechanical underburning of the fuel,
and Q5 is the heat lost owing to radiation.

A numerical value for the efficiency of a facility and of individual parts of a facility can be
determined from heat balance data.
I. N. ROZENGAUZ

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

How to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us, add a link to this page, add the site to
iGoogle, or visit webmaster's page for free fun content.

Link to this page:

Please bookmark with social media, your votes are noticed and appreciated: