Abstract. This paper shows how to move from a specification of free energy for the solidification of a binary alloy to the dynamical equations using the elegance of a dissipative bracket analogous to the Poisson bracket of Hamiltonian mechanics. A key new result is the derivation of the temperature equation for single-phase thermal-solutal models, which contains generalisations and extra terms which challenge standard models. We also present, for the first time, the temperature equation for thermal multi-phase field models. There are two main ingredients: one, the specification of the free energy in terms of the time and space dependent field variables: n-phases φ i , a concentration variable c, and temperature T ; two, the specification of the dissipative bracket in terms of these variables, their gradients and a set of diffusion parameters, which may themselves depend on the field variables. The paper explains the method within this context and demonstrates its thermodynamic admissibility.