Republic of the Philippines

Batangas State University

College of Engineering, Architecture, and Fine Arts

Mechanical Engineering Department

ME 402 – Thermodynamics 1

Research Work No. 5

Ideal Gas Law

Submitted by:

Castor, Philip Andrei M.

ME-2104

Submitted to:

Engr. Neil Tristan M. Buenviaje

Instructor

November 21, 2019

Ideal Gas Law
Gases are full of billions and billions of energetic gas molecules that can collide
and possibly interact with each other making them complicated. People created the
concept of an ideal gas as an approximation that helps us model and predict the
behavior of real gases because it's really hard to exactly describe a real gas. An ideal
gas is a hypothetical gas dreamed by chemists and students because it would be much
easier if things like intermolecular forces do not exist to complicate the simple Ideal Gas
Law. Ideal gases are essentially point masses moving in constant, random, straight-line
motion. It is defined as one in which all collisions between atoms or molecules are
perfectly elastic and in which there are no intermolecular attractive forces. One can
visualize it as a collection of perfectly hard spheres which collide but which otherwise do
not interact with each other. In such a gas, all the internal energy is in the form of kinetic
energy and any change in internal energy is accompanied by a change in temperature.
The term ideal gas refers to a hypothetical gas composed of molecules which follow a
few rules:

 Ideal gas molecules do not attract or repel each other. The only interaction
between ideal gas molecules would be an elastic collision upon impact with each
other or an elastic collision with the walls of the container.
 Ideal gas molecules themselves take up no volume. The gas takes up volume
since the molecules expand into a large region of space, but the Ideal gas
molecules are approximated as point particles that have no volume in and of
themselves.

There are no gases that are exactly ideal, but there are plenty of gases that are
close enough that the concept of an ideal gas is an extremely useful approximation for
many situations. In fact, for temperatures near room temperature and pressures near
atmospheric pressure, many of the gases we care about are very nearly ideal.

The gas variables, pressure P, volume V, and temperature T, of an ideal gas are
related by a simple formula called the ideal gas law. The simplicity of this relationship is
a big reason why we typically treat gases as ideal, unless there is a good reason to do
otherwise.
 PV = nRT

Where P is the pressure of the gas, V is the volume taken up by the gas, T is the
temperature of the gas, R is the gas constant, and n is the number of moles of the gas.

The term pV / nRT is also called the compression factor and is a measure of the
ideality of the gas. An ideal gas will always equal 1 when plugged into this equation.
The greater it deviates from the number 1, the more it will behave like a real gas rather
than an ideal.

The Ideal Gas Law is simply the combination of all Simple Gas Laws (Boyle's Law,
Charles' Law, and Avogadro's Law) and the Simple Gas Laws can always be derived
from the Ideal Gas equation.

Boyle’s Law describes the inverse proportional relationship between pressure and
volume at a constant temperature and a fixed amount of gas. This can be expressed
from two pressure / volume points:

P1V1=P2V2

Charles's Law describes the directly proportional relationship between the volume
and temperature (in Kelvin) of a fixed amount of gas, when the pressure is held
constant. This can be expressed from two volume / temperature points:

V1 V2
=
T 1 T2
 Avogadro’s Law describes the volume of a gas is directly proportional to the amount
of gas at a constant temperature and pressure. This can be expressed as a two
volume / number points:

V1 V2
=
n1 n 2

References:

https://www.khanacademy.org/science/physics/thermodynamics/temp-kinetic-theory-
ideal-gas-law/a/what-is-the-ideal-gas-law?
utm_account=Grant&utm_campaignname=Grant_Science_Dynamic&gclid=Cj0KCQiA5
dPuBRCrARIsAJL7oeh00Ilr27vWiGl7qMVexS9XZ7dL60H7oQNsQewHWElf3zryeqo2i7
0aAkpMEALw_wcB
https://chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Physical_and_Theoretical_Chemistry_Textbook
_Maps/Supplemental_Modules_(Physical_and_Theoretical_Chemistry)/Physical_Prope
rties_of_Matter/States_of_Matter/Properties_of_Gases/Gas_Laws/The_Ideal_Gas_Law
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Kinetic/idegas.html
 Republic of the Philippines

Batangas State University

College of Engineering, Architecture, and Fine Arts

Mechanical Engineering Department

ME 402 – Thermodynamics 1

Research Work No. 6

Ideal Gas Processes

Submitted by:

Castor, Philip Andrei M.

ME-2104

Submitted to:

Engr. Neil Tristan M. Buenviaje

Instructor

November 21, 2019

Ideal Gas Processes

Thermodynamics is the study of the movement of heat. If you touch a block of

ice, it isn't always pleasant unless it's a really hot day. If you touch a hot pan out of the
oven you'll burn yourself. Both of those things happen because of how fast heat is
moving. The heat from the hot pan moves into your hand rapidly, and when touching an
ice cube, you lose your own body heat fast. Heat transfers from hot places to cold
places - or in other words, heat spreads out. Extreme heat or cold can damage our
tissues, so it's a pretty important thing to understand. It's also how we've been able to
build refrigerators and large insulated coolers to take to the beach. These are examples
of the many things we can do with heat if we understand how it moves within or
between systems, specifically in ideal gas. There are four types of thermodynamics
processes. What this basically means is that in a system, one or more variable is held
constant.

 Isothermal Process - is a change of a system in which the temperature remains

constant: ΔT = 0. Typically this occurs when a system is in contact with an
outside thermal reservoir (heat bath), and the change occurs slowly enough to
allow the system to adjust continually to the temperature of the reservoir through
heat exchange. During an isothermal process there is a change in internal
energy, heat energy, and work, even though the temperature remains the same.
Something in the system works to maintain that equal temperature. One simple
ideal example is the Carnot Cycle, which basically describes how a heat engine
works by supplying heat to a gas. As a result, the gas expands in a cylinder, and
that pushes a piston to do some work. The heat or gas has to then be pushed out
of the cylinder (or dumped) so that the next heat/expansion cycle can take place.
This is what happens inside a car engine, for example. If this cycle is completely
efficient, the process is isothermal because the temperature is kept constant
while pressure changes.
 Isobaric Process - is a thermodynamic process in which pressure stays constant:
ΔP = 0. This is usually obtained by allowing the volume to expand or contract in
such a way to neutralize any pressure changes that would be caused by heat
 transfer. For an ideal gas, this means the volume of a gas is proportional to its
temperature (historically, this is called Charles’ law). In an isobaric process, there
are typically internal energy changes. Work is done by the system, and heat is
transferred, so none of the quantities in the first law of thermodynamics readily
reduce to zero. However, the work at a constant pressure can be fairly easily
calculated with the equation:
W =p∗Δ V
Since W is the work, p is the pressure (always positive) and ΔV is the
change in volume, we can see that there are two possible outcomes to an
isobaric process:
 If the system expands (ΔV is positive), then the system does positive work
(and vice versa).
 If the system contracts (ΔV is negative), then the system does negative
work (and vice versa).

 Isochoric Process - is a thermodynamic process in which the volume remains

constant. Since the volume is constant, the system does no work and W = 0. This
can be obtained by placing the system in a sealed container which neither
expands nor contracts. It is possible to do work on a system without changing the
volume, as in the case of stirring a liquid. Some sources use "isochoric" in these
cases to mean "zero-work" regardless of whether there is a change in volume or
not. In most straightforward applications, however, this nuance will not need to
be considered—if the volume remains constant throughout the process, it is an
isochoric process.

 Adiabatic Process - is a thermodynamic process in which there is no heat

transfer into or out of a system and is generally obtained by surrounding the
entire system with a strongly insulating material or by carrying out the process so
quickly that there is no time for a significant heat transfer to take place. A system
that expands under adiabatic conditions does positive work, so the internal
energy decreases, and a system that contracts under adiabatic conditions does
 negative work, so the internal energy increases. The compression and expansion
strokes in an internal-combustion engine are both approximately adiabatic
processes—what little heat transfers outside of the system is negligible and
virtually all of the energy change goes into moving the piston.

When gas is compressed through adiabatic processes, it causes the

temperature of the gas to rise through a process known as adiabatic heating;
however, expansion through adiabatic processes against a spring or pressure
causes a drop in temperature through a process called adiabatic cooling.

Adiabatic heating happens when gas is pressurized by the work done on it

by its surroundings like the piston compression in a diesel engine's fuel cylinder.
This can also occur naturally like when air masses in the Earth's atmosphere
press down on a surface like a slope on a mountain range, causing temperatures
to rise because of the work done on the mass of air to decrease its volume
against the land mass.

Adiabatic cooling, on the other hand, happens when expansion occurs on

isolated systems, which force them to do work on their surrounding areas. In the
example of air flow, when that mass of air is depressurized by a lift in a wind
current, its volume is allowed to spread back out, reducing the temperature.

References:

http://www.thoughtco.com
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-physics/chapter/ideal-gas-law/
https://study.com/academy/lesson/thermodynamic-processes-isobaric-isochoric-
isothermal-adiabatic.html