Surroundings-based and system-based heat and work definitions: Which one is the most suitable?

The concepts of heat and work are important to the formulation of thermodynamics, because of their different ways of accounting for energy exchange between a system and its surroundings. Gislason and Craig have published an article in which they discussed two formulations of heat (Q) and work (W), namely a system-based definition and a surroundings- based definition. It is necessary to start with the definition of the system under study and identify the properties of the boundary, which separates the system from its surroundings to describe and analyze any thermodynamics process. It is also important to note that heat and work are energy flows crossing the system-surroundings boundary and are functions of the process taking place. Any system-based definition would only include the configuration work, whereas a surroundings-based definition encompasses the total work W, which includes both configuration and dissipative components.