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*Corresponding author (email: chenqun@tsinghua.edu.cn)
Article
SPECIAL TOPICS:
Engineering Thermophysics
December 2012 Vol.57 No.35: 4646

4652
doi: 10.1007/s11434-012-5476-5
The property diagram in heat transfer and its applications
CHEN Qun
*
, XU YunChao & GUO ZengYuan
Key Laboratory for Thermal Science and Power Engineering of Ministry of Education, Department of Engineering Mechanics, Tsinghua
University, Beijing 100084, China
Received May 12, 2012; accepted August 21, 2012

Inspired by the property diagrams in thermodynamics, which distinctly reflect the performance and characteristics of thermody-
namic cycles, we establish a state equation for heat motion and introduce a two-dimension property diagram, T-q diagram, in heat
transfer to analyze and optimize the performance of heat exchangers, where heat flow is a state parameter for heat motion. Ac-
cording to the property diagram, it is convenient to obtain the influences of heat exchanger area, heat capacity rate and flow ar-
rangement on the heat transfer performance during the analysis of heat exchangers and their networks. For instance, when analyz-
ing the heat exchanger network in a district heating system, it is obvious to find that: if both the heat demand and the indoor air
temperature in each branch of the network are the same, the total area of heat exchangers, the flow rate of water and the return
water temperature in each branch are all the same; if the indoor air temperatures in different branches are different, the tempera-
tures of the waters after flowing through different branches are different, which means that the mixing process of return waters
with the same temperature is not an essential requirement to realize the best performance of district heating systems.
heat transfer, property diagram, irreversibility, entransy dissipation, optimal design

Citation: Chen Q, Xu Y C, Guo Z Y. The property diagram in heat transfer and its applications. Chin Sci Bull, 2012, 57: 46464652, doi: 10.1007/s11434-012-
5476-5



Heat is one of the most common forms during energy utili-
zation [14]. It can be obtained from the chemical energy of
fuels through combustion, the atomic energy of radioactive
material by either nuclear fission or nuclear fusion, and the
solar energy or the geothermal energy by direct collection.
Meanwhile, there are two different purposes in heat utiliza-
tion: one is to generate power, and the other is to directly
heat or cool objects. In the former purpose, heat is convert-
ed to mechanical energy through the heat absorption, ex-
pansion, heat release and compression processes of working
substances, where the property diagrams in thermodynamics,
e.g. p-v, T-s and h-s diagrams, are wildly used to directly
express the variation rules of the state parameters of the
working substances during a heat-work conversion process,
qualitatively describe the exchanges of work and heat be-
tween the working substances and the surrounding envi-
ronment in a thermodynamic cycle, and optimal design
some ideal thermodynamic cycles for promoting the con-
version efficiency.
A thermodynamically reversible cycle is composed of
several quasi-equilibrium processes, i.e. quasi-static pro-
cesses, which have to progress at an infinitely slow rate in
order to be reversible. Therefore, the output power of an
ideal reversible thermodynamic cycle is zero. That is, a re-
versible cycle is a theoretical construct, which cannot actu-
ally occur and is seldom even approached in reality. In
practical thermodynamic cycles, all real processes take
place with finite potential difference and have finite rates,
so they are all irreversible, where the property diagram in
thermodynamics cannot be directly used to analyze and op-
timize the performance. For instance, heat transfer process-
es with finite temperature difference are irreversible pro-
cesses and heat is regarded as a process parameter in ther-
modynamics, so the property diagram cannot be constructed
in heat transfer to analyze and optimize the performance.
In order to analyze heat transfer with finite temperature
difference, Guo et al. [5] introduced a new physical quantity,
entransy, to describe the ability of an object transferring
Chen Q, et al. Chin Sci Bull December (2012) Vol.57 No.35 4647
heat to the other object and used entransy dissipation to
measure the irreversibility of heat transfer. This has already
been successfully applied to analyze and optimize heat and
mass transfer processes and apparatus including heat con-
duction [58], heat convection [914], thermal radiation
[15], evaporative cooling [16,17] and heat exchanger (net-
works) [1823]. In this article, we briefly review the origin
and applications of the property diagrams in thermodynam-
ics, propose two state parameters in heat transfer based on
the analogy between heat transfer and fluid flow, construct a
property diagram in heat transfer by taking the two state
parameters as coordinates to describe the variations of en-
transy for both hot and cold fluids during heat transfer pro-
cesses and meanwhile measure the irreversibility of the
processes, and finally to optimize heat transfer performance
and promote energy utilization efficiency qualitatively.
1 Property diagrams in thermodynamics
In thermodynamics, the parameters that describe the equi-
librium state of the working substances are called state pa-
rameters, such as pressure, temperature and entropy. More-
over, the stable equilibrium state of a closed simple com-
pressible system with given internal restraints can be char-
acterized completely by only two independent state param-
eters. For example, the two independent parameters, pres-
sure and specific volume, can determine the equilibrium
state of ideal gas. Taking any two independent state param-
eters to be the x and y coordinates, the constructed plane is
property diagrams in thermodynamics, e.g. the p-v and T-s
diagrams showed in Figure 1. In the property diagrams,
each point represents an equilibrium state of the substances
and each curve represents a quasi-equilibrium process,
where the relation between the state and process parameters
is described based on the first law of thermodynamics as:
dU Q W = , (1)
where U represents the thermodynamic energy of the sub-
stances, Q and W respectively stand for the heat and work
exchanged between the substances and the environment. In
eq. (1), the thermodynamic energy is a state parameter
which has the total differential form, dU, to describe its
variation. However, the heat and work exchanged are all
process parameters which have to be represented by Q and
W, respectively, and can be clearly expressed by the area
which are surrounded by the process curves, and the hori-
zontal and vertical axes. For example, in Figure 1(a), the
shaded area under the process curve (12) stands for the
work of expansion, while the shaded area towards the verti-
cal axis of the process curve (12) represents the flow work
exchanged between substances and environments. In Figure
1(b), the shaded area under the process curve (12) is the
heat exchanged between substances/systems and environ-
ments in reversible processes. Therefore, through calculat-

Figure 1 The property diagrams in thermodynamics. (a) p-v diagram; (b)
T-s diagram.
ing the shaded area, the expansion work, w, flow work w
t

and heat q can be easily obtained [14].

2
1
d w p v =
|
,
2
1
d
t
w v p =
|
,
2
1
d q T s =
|
, (2)
where s is the specific entransy.
Moreover, in a property diagram, the closed polygon
constructed by some process curves directly depicts a ther-
modynamic cycle. For example, Figure 2(a) and 2(b) sepa-
rately show the four thermodynamic processes in the re-
versible Carnot cycle, i.e. the isothermal heat absorption
process (12), the adiabatic expansion process (23), the
isothermal heat rejection process (34) and the adiabatic
compression process (41), respectively in the p-v and T-s
diagrams. In Figure 2(a) and (b), the shaded area surround-
ed by the four process curves separately represent the me-
chanical work and the heat exchanged between the systems
and the surrounding environments in the Carnot cycle.
2 Property diagrams in heat transfer
Heat transfer is thermal energy in transit due to a tempera-
ture difference [24], which cares about how to control (in-
crease or reduce) the heat transfer rate with a given temper-
ature difference or how to reduce the temperature difference
when the heat transfer rate is fixed. Because heat, in classic
thermodynamics, is a process parameter, there is no property
diagram constructed with heat as the horizontal or vertical
4648 Chen Q, et al. Chin Sci Bull December (2012) Vol.57 No.35

Figure 2 The property diagrams of reversible Carnot cycle. (a) p-v dia-
gram; (b) T-s diagram.
coordinate to analyze heat transfer performance. Instead, the
common diagram to analyze the fluid temperature variations
in a heat exchanger is the T-A diagram, which is constructed
with the temperature, T, and the heat exchange area, A, sep-
arately as the vertical and horizontal coordinates. As shown
in Figure 3, the temperature of the hot fluid falls from T
h,in

at the inlet to T
h,out
at the outlet and that of the cold fluid
raises from T
c,in
at the inlet to T
c,out
at the outlet. Meanwhile,
on both sides of the shaded area dA, the temperatures of the
hot and cold fluids are T
h
and T
c
, respectively, and hence the
heat flux, dq, between the hot and cold fluids is
( ) d d =
h c
q K T T A, (3)
where K is the heat transfer coefficient of the heat exchang-


Figure 3 The variations of fluid temperatures with the heat transfer area
in a counter-flow heat exchanger.
ers. Integral of eq. (3) offers the total heat transferred be-
tween the hot and cold fluids in the heat exchangers, which
corresponds to the area of the quadrilateral in Figure 3.
Although the quadrilateral in the T-A diagram can re-
flects heat transfer performance in a heat exchanger, the
area A is not a state parameter of fluids, and thus the areas
under the temperature curves of both hot and cold fluids has
no clear physical meaning. Most importantly, the T-A dia-
gram is not the property diagrams in heat transfer and can-
not reveal the irreversibility of heat transfer.
In particle dynamics, velocity and location determine the
state of moving particles, which means that velocity and
location are the state parameters for particles motion. In
fluid mechanics, pressure, velocity, acceleration, momen-
tum and kinetic energy are all the state parameters to de-
scribe the state of fluid flow. All of these state parameters
satisfy the related governing equations. Moreover, it should
be addressed that because any state parameter of the system
corresponds to only one process parameter with same char-
acteristic, there is no need to distinguish the state and pro-
cess parameters in fluid mechanics, e.g. the dissipation of
mechanical energy equivalent to the generation of thermal
energy.
For the fully-developed laminar flow in a regular and
straight horizontal circular tube, there is no net mass im-
porting or exporting in each differential control volume but
the transfer of kinetic and potential energy among adjacent
differential control volumes or walls due to the drive of ve-
locity gradient. Because the potential energy will dissipate
to the thermal energy due to viscous effect, the pressure of
fluid drops along the flow direction. In this case, the gov-
erning equation to describe the relation between pressure
and velocity is

8
d d p u L
R

= , (4)
where is the viscosity, R is the radius of the circular tube,
u is the average velocity of the fluids, L is the distance.
Taking the pressure p and the volume flow rate V

, the
two independent state parameters describing fluid flow, as
the horizontal and vertical coordinates, we can construct the
property diagrams, as shown in Figure 4, in fluid mechanics.
Any point in the diagram represents a state of fluid flow and
the area under the process curve (12) stands for the me-
chanical energy dissipation during fluid flow. That is, by
calculating the shaded area, the dissipation rate of mechan-
ical energy during the fluid flow process in the circular tube,

m
, is easily obtained.
.
m
V p u = A

(5)
Heat transfer and fluid flow are two analogous physical
phenomena. However, in the existing heat transfer studies,
there is no physical quantity to describe the motion state of
heat, e.g. the velocity and the potential of heat, and it lacks a
Chen Q, et al. Chin Sci Bull December (2012) Vol.57 No.35 4649

Figure 4 The variation of the fluid pressure with the volume flow rate in
a regular straight horizontal circular tube.
state equation in heat transfer, so it is difficult to establish a
property diagram for the analysis of heat transfer.
For a fluid flow process with the mass flow rate m , spe-
cific heat capacity, c
p
and temperature T, its enthalpy flow
rate is:

p
h mc T =

. (6)
After flowing through a certain heat transfer area, the
temperature variation of the fluid is T, and its correspond-
ing heat flow, q, that the fluid absorbs or releases is:

p
q mc T = A . (7)
According to the thermomass theory [25], heat transfer
are the flow processes of thermomass. Meanwhile, the re-
lated flow velocity of thermomass during heat transfer, u
h
,
is expressed as

h
q
u
CTA
= , (8)
where and C are the density and the specific heat capacity
of heat transfer medium, respectively.
In fluid mechanics, velocity is the state parameter to de-
scribe fluid flow. Therefore, the velocity of thermomass is
the state parameter to describe thermomass flow, i.e. heat
transfer. Moreover, according to the relation between q and
u
h
in eq. (8), heat flow q is also the state parameter to de-
scribe the transfer speed of heat. At the same time, eq. (7) is
the state equation to reveal the relation among the tempera-
ture, the specific heat capacity, the mass flow rate and the
heat flow during the heat transfer processes in heat ex-
changers.
Taking the two independent state parameters, the tem-
perature T and the heat flow q, as the horizontal and vertical
coordinates as shown in Figure 5, we will obtain the prop-
erty diagram in heat transfer. Any point in the diagram rep-
resents a state of heat flow. The process curves (12) and
(13) represent the heat flow processes of fluids and the
slopes of curves are inversely proportional to the heat ca-
pacity rates of fluids. Especially, when the heat capacity

Figure 5 The property diagram in heat transfer.
rate of fluid is infinite, the slope of the process curve ap-
proaches zero, i.e. process curve (13).
Accompanying with the heat flow, there are also entransy
flow during a heat transfer process. For example, when the
temperature drop of the fluid is dT and the corresponding
heat flow is dq, the output entransy is [5,21]:
d d G T q =

, (9)
which can be represented by the shaded area in Figure 5,
where the area under the process curve stands for the
entransy flow when the fluid temperature drops from T
in
to
T
out
, i.e.

( ) ( )
2 2
in out
in out
2 2
p
mc T T
T T q
G

+
= =

. (10)
When T
out
vanishes, the entransy flow exporting from the
fluid to the surrounding environment is the maximum. In
this case, eq. (10) describes the capacity of the fluid to
transfer heat to the environment with the absolute zero of
temperature as the benchmark, which is termed entransy:

2
in
1
2
p
G mc T =

. (11)
Figure 6 shows the property diagram for both hot and
cold fluids in a two-flow heat exchanger. Through any dif-
ferential heat transfer area, the heat released from the hot
fluid is the same as that absorbed by the cold fluid:

, ,
d d d
h p h h c p c c
q m c T m c T = = , (12)
and the shaded area in Figure 6 is
d d d
h c
S T q T q = , (13)
where the first and second terms on the right side represent
the entransy flows that the hot fluid releases and the cold
fluid absorbs, respectively. Therefore, the shaded area in
Figure 6 stands for the entransy dissipation due to the heat
flow, dq, between the hot and cold fluids:
( ) d d
h h c
T T q = . (14)
4650 Chen Q, et al. Chin Sci Bull December (2012) Vol.57 No.35

Figure 6 The property diagram for the hot and cold fluids in a heat ex-
changer.
The area between the process curves (ab) and (cd)
represent the total entransy dissipation rate in the whole
heat exchanger, which can be used to analyze the irreversi-
bility of heat transfer processes and consequently evaluate
the heat transfer performance in the heat exchangers:

AM
d
h h
T Q u = =
|
, (15)
where T
AM
is the arithmetic mean temperature difference.
3 The applications of the property diagram in
heat transfer
3.1 The analysis of heat transfer performance in heat
exchangers
In heat exchangers with random flow arrangement, the hot
fluid with a certain heat capacity rate, m
h
c
p,h
, needs to be
cooled from T
h,a
to T
h,b
. In Figure 7, the straight line ab in-
dicates the temperature variation of the hot fluid versus the
heat flow in the heat exchanger. If the heat exchanger is a
counter-flow heat exchanger with infinite heat transfer area
and the heat capacity rate of the cold fluid is equivalent to
that of the hot fluid, the straight line cd shows the tempera-
ture variation of the cold fluid versus the heat flow. In this
case, lines cd and ab are coincident, which means the en-
transy flow that the hot fluid exports equals to that the cold
fluid imports. Therefore, there is no entransy dissipation and
the heat transfer process in the heat exchanger is reversible.
When the heat transfer area of the heat exchangers is not
large enough, the straight line ef in Figure 7 reveals the
temperature variation of the cold fluid versus the heat flow
in the heat exchanger. Due to the temperature difference
between the hot and cold fluids, the entransy flow exported
from hot fluid will partly dissipate, which can be directly
indicated by the parallelogram abef constructed by lines ab
and ef. In this case, the area of abef reflects one of the fac-
tors influencing the performance of heat exchangers, i.e.
finite heat transfer area.
When the heat capacity rates of hot and cold fluids are
different, e.g. m
h
c
p,h
< m
c
c
p,c
, the straight line eg in Figure 7
represents the temperature variation of the cold fluid with a
larger heat capacity rate versus the heat flow. As shown in
Figure 7, the difference between the heat capacity rates of
hot and cold fluids causes that the area of the trapezoid abeg
is larger than that of the parallelogram abef, which means
the entransy dissipation during heat transfer increases. The
increase of entransy dissipation can be represented by the
area of the triangle efg. In this case, increasing the differ-
ence of heat capacity rates between the hot and cold fluids
will further enlarge the area of triangle efg, i.e. promote the
entransy dissipation in the heat exchanger, which reduces
the performance of the heat exchanger. Therefore, the area
of the triangle efg reflects the second influence factors of
the performance of heat exchangers, i.e. the difference of
heat capacity rates between two fluids.
Furthermore, when the heat exchanger is parallel-flow,
the straight line hi in Figure 7 is the temperature variation of
the cold fluid versus the heat flow. In order to cool the hot
fluid from T
h,a
to T
h,b
with the same heat transfer area, the
inlet temperature of the cold fluid drops from T
c,e
to T
c,h
,
which makes the area of the trapezoid abih be larger than
that of the trapezoid abef. It means that when the heat ca-
pacity rates of the hot and cold fluids in different heat ex-
changers are the same, parallel-flow heat exchangers have
larger entransy dissipation than counter-flow heat exchang-
ers, which is described by the difference between the area of
triangles fhk and eki. Therefore, the difference between the
area of triangles fhk and eki reflects that the flow arrange-
ment of heat exchangers is another influence factor of the
performance of heat exchangers.
In a word, T-q diagram clearly indicates the above three
influence factors of the performance of heat exchangers, i.e.
finite heat transfer area, difference of heat capacity rates and
flow arrangement of heat exchangers.
3.2 The optimal design of heat exchanger networks
Figure 8 gives the sketch of a typical heat exchanger net-


Figure 7 The property diagram for different types of heat exchangers
with different heat capacity rates of fluids.
Chen Q, et al. Chin Sci Bull December (2012) Vol.57 No.35 4651

Figure 8 The sketch of a typical heat exchanger network for district
heating [22].
work for district heating. The hot water with the inlet tem-
perature, T
h,in
, and the total mass flux, m
in
, is distributed into
different branches, flows in order through the series-
connected heat exchangers of the users, satisfies the heat
demands of each user, gathers together in the main loop,
and finally flows back to the substation. When both the in-
door temperature, T
ij
, and the heat demand, Q
ij
of each users
in a branch are all the same, Figure 9 shows the temperature
variations of the hot water and the indoor air versus the heat
flow, where the heat capacity rate of the indoor air is sup-
posed to be infinite due to the constant indoor air tempera-
ture. As shown in Figure 9, along the flow direction of the
hot water in each branch, the temperature difference be-
tween the hot water and the indoor air decreases, which
means the entransy dissipations in downstream heat ex-
changers becomes less. That is, in order to satisfy the same
heating demand, the heat transfer areas of the downstream
heat exchangers should be larger, which are approximately
inversely proportional to the entransy dissipations in each
heat exchanger.
When the indoor temperature, T
ij
, of each user in the
heating network and the total heat demand in each heating


Figure 9 The property diagram for the hot water and the indoor air in a
branch.
branch,
ij i
j
Q Q =
_
, are all the same, Figure 10(a) shows
the temperature variations of the hot water and the indoor
air versus the heat flow in the heating network with two
branches. Due to the symmetry, the total heat transfer areas,
the mass flow rates of hot water and the return water tem-
peratures in each branch are the same. If the indoor air
temperatures of the two branches are different (T
1
< T
2
),
Figure 10(b) shows the temperature variations of the hot
water and the indoor air versus the heat flow in each branch.
In order to satisfy the heating demand, the mass flow rate of
hot water in the second branch needs to increase. If the total
mass flow rate of hot water in the network is fixed, the mass
flow rate of hot water in the first

branch will decrease,
which means the total entransy dissipation in the system
should be reduced, and the heat transfer areas in both
branches need to be enlarged to satisfy the users demands.
Moreover, as shown in Figure 10(b), when the indoor air
temperatures are different, the temperatures of the hot wa-
ters after flowing through each branch are also different,
which means the return waters mixing with the same tem-
perature is not a requirement to obtain the optimal design of
district heating networks.
4 Conclusions
Inspired by the superior of the property diagram in thermo-
dynamics for the analysis of thermodynamic cycles, we
proposes that heat flow is a state parameter in heat transfer,
introduces the governing equation, develops a 2D property
diagram in heat transfer, T-q diagram, which can clearly
analyze the performance of heat transfer processes. For
example, it illustrates the influences of such three factors


Figure 10 The property diagrams for the hot water and the indoor air in a
district heating network with two branches. (a) T
1
=T
2
; (b) T
1
T
2.
4652 Chen Q, et al. Chin Sci Bull December (2012) Vol.57 No.35
as finite heat transfer area, different heat capacity rates of
fluids and flow arrangement on the irreversibility of the heat
transfer processes in heat exchangers, which contributes to
the optimal design of heat exchanges and their systems.
Furthermore, for the series-connected heat exchanger
networks in a district heating system, T-q diagram reflects
that along the flow direction of the hot water in each branch,
the heat transfer areas of the downstream heat exchangers
should be enlarged to reduce the entransy dissipation. For a
parallel-connected network with many branches, when both
the indoor temperatures of each user and the total heat de-
mands in each heating branch are the same, the total heat
transfer areas, the mass flow rates and the return tempera-
tures of the hot waters in each branch are all the same.
However, when the indoor air temperatures in different
branches are different, the temperatures of the hot water
after flowing through the heating branches are not the same,
which means the return waters mixing with the same tem-
perature is not a requirement to obtain the optimal design of
district heating networks.
In summary, the property diagram in heat transfer con-
tributes to deepen the understanding of heat transfer phe-
nomena and processes and promote the development of heat
transfer. In engineering, the property diagram is suitable for
measuring the irreversibility and evaluating the performance
of heat transfer processes. Furthermore, it can be applied in
the optimal designs of heat transfer processes, heat ex-
changers, heat exchanger networks and different types of
complicated energy systems in the future.
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of
China (51006060 and 51036003) and the Foundation for the Author of
National Excellent Doctoral Dissertation of China.
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