text: The amount of useful work which may be extracted from a thermodynamic system is determined by the second law of thermodynamics.  Under many practical situations this can be represented by the thermodynamic availability, or Exergy, function.  Two important cases are: in thermodynamic systems where the temperature and volume are held constant, the measure of useful work attainable is the Helmholtz free energy function; and in systems where the temperature and pressure are held constant, the measure of useful work attainable is the Gibbs free energy.