Saturday, October 13, 2018

Effect of Temperature on GIbbs Free Energy

Imagine a reaction in which you decompose liquid water to produce oxygen gas and hydrogen gas:

H2O(l) → H2(g) + ½O2(g)
The reaction is endothermic, ΔH > 0, and the change in entropy is also positive, ΔS > 0
At room temperature and pressure this reaction is not spontaneous ( ΔG > 0).
But could I heat, or cool, the reaction sufficiently to make the reaction spontaneous?
Can I turn a nonspontaneous reaction into a spontaneous reaction by changing the temperature?
Want to know?
Go to https://www.ausetute.com.au/gibbstemp.html

AUS-e-TUTE Members can access the tutorial, game, test and exam by logging-in to the Members Only area of the website.

Thursday, October 4, 2018

Gibbs Free Energy Calculations

For a chemical system, either a chemical reaction or a physical change, at a constant temperature and pressure we define a function called the Gibbs Free Energy (G) so that we can determine whether the system will be spontaneous or non-spontaneous:
  • spontaneous if ΔG < 0 (ΔG is negative)
  • non-spontaneous if ΔG > 0 (ΔG is positive)

In this new tutorial we will calculate the change in Gibbs free energy of a reaction at constant temperature and pressure (ΔG) using:
For a chemical system under standard conditions, we can calculate the change in standard Gibbs free energy using the equation shown below:
ΔG° = ΔH° - TΔS°


AUS-e-TUTE members can access the new Gibbs free energy calculations tutorial, game, test and exam when they log-in (Go to Physical Chemistry Heading, then "Thermodynamics").

If you are not an AUS-e-TUTE member, there is a "free-to-view" Gibbs free energy calculations tutorial currently available for evaluation purposes at https://www.ausetute.com.au/gibbscalc.html