- Author
- Babrauskas, V.
- Title
- Related Quantities. Part A. Heat of Combustion and Potential Heat.
- Coporate
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD
- Report
- Chapter 8
- Book or Conf
- Heat Release in Fires, Elsevier Applied Science, NY, Babrauskas, V.; Grayson, S. J., Editors, 207-223 p., 1992
- Keywords
- heat release rate | fire protection engineering | heat of combustion | potential heat
- Abstract
- In a combustion reaction, the essential quantity is the heat of reaction. Since in typical combustion reactions we are dealing with constant-pressure, rather than constant-volume systems, it is most convenient to work with enthalpies, rather than energies. The enthalpy, H (kJ), is defined as: H = U + PV where U is the energy (kJ), P is the pressure (kPa), and V is the volume (m³). In thermodynamics and engineering calculations, specific enthalpy, h, is often used (and also specific energy, u). Molar units (kJ/mol) for these terms are typical in thermodynamics calculations, while in engineering computations it is often convenient to adopt mass (kJ/kg) units.