In thermodynamics, uncompensated transformation is a transformation which thus remains at the conclusion of a cyclical process without another opposite one, and which can only be positive. [1] The logic behind this term was a significant precursor to the conept of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics.
In the 1920s, Belgian chemist Theophile de Donder incorporated Clausius’ logic of the uncompensated transformations into a chemical reaction formalism of the second law through the concept of affinity. [2]
References
1. Clausius, R. (1865). The Mechanical Theory of Heat – with its Applications to the Steam Engine and to Physical Properties of Bodies, (pgs. 133), (URL). London: John van Voorst, 1 Paternoster Row. MDCCCLXVII.
2. (a) Kondepudi, Dilip and Prigogine, Ilya. (1998). Modern Thermodynamics – from Heat Engines to Dissipative Structures, (keyword: “uncompensated transformation”, pg. 86). New York: John Wiley & Sons.
(b) Kondepudi, Dilip. (2008). Introduction to Modern Thermodynamics, (keyword: “uncompensated transformation”, pgs. 118-20). John Wiley and Sons.
