On Exergy and Environmental Impact

Abstract

SUMMARYEnvironmental problems span a continuously growing range of pollutants, hazards and eco-system degradation factors that affect areas ranging from local through regional to global. Some of these problems may arise from observable, chronic effects on, for instance, human health, while others may stem from the perceived risk of a possible accidental release of hazardous materials. A significant number of these environmental issues are caused by or relate to the production, transformation and end use of energy. In this regard, energy and environment studies which lead to increased energy efficiency can reduce environmental impact by reducing energy losses. Within the scope of exergy methods, such activities lead to increased exergy efficiency, which is of great importance for practical applications. In this study, the main relationships between energy and environmental impact are identified. Historical and modern examples are used to illustrate some of the concepts. The relationships introduced are: order-destruction/chaos-creation, resource degradation and waste exergy emissions. Some examples are given demonstrating the use of exergy analysis in addressing and solving environmental problems.

Indicators for the Environmental Impact of Waste Emissions: Comparison of Exergy and Other Indicators

“…• Uses of exergy are increasing in fields related to environmental impact [17,[29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40]. That work is aimed at understanding environmental impact better, and developing better predictors and indicators of environmental impact, especially for environmental emissions.…”

Understanding the Sustainability of Fuel from the Viewpoint of Exergy

“…According to the above statements, the exergy of an energy/fuel resource is the amount of maximum obtainable work when the energy/fuel resource is brought to a state of thermodynamic equilibrium with the common components of natural surroundings (environmental condition) by means of reversible processes, involving interactions only with the components (mentioned above) of natural surroundings (Rosen and Dincer, 1997;Rosen, 2002;Dincer and Rosen, 2005;Rosen et al, 2008). It measures not only how far the energy/fuel resource deviates from the state of equilibrium with its environment (Wall, 1986), but also measures the quality of the energy/fuel resource (Zhang et al, 2013;Zhang et al, 2015a;Zhang et al, 2016a).…”

“…Exergy is the amount of work obtainable when a matter is brought to a state of thermodynamic equilibrium with the uniform environment reference (Szargut, 1980;Rosen and Dincer, 1997;Dincer, 2002;Rosen, 2009b), and it is an effective measure of the potential the matter impacts or changes the environment (Dincer and Rosen, 1998;Utlu and Hepbasli, 2004;Dincer, 2007;Koroneos and Tsarouhis, 2012). Therefore, some researchers suggested that the environmental impacts of emissions are best addressed by considering exergy (Rosen and Dincer, 1997;Dincer, 2000;Midilli and Dincer, 2010;Caliskan, 2015).…”

“…Therefore, some researchers suggested that the environmental impacts of emissions are best addressed by considering exergy (Rosen and Dincer, 1997;Dincer, 2000;Midilli and Dincer, 2010;Caliskan, 2015).…”

“…Exergy is an important tool for measuring the maximum amount of obtainable work (Szargut, 1980;Rosen and Dincer, 1997;Dincer, 2002;Rosen, 2009a), it has been widely used to evaluate the energy qualities of natural resources (Wall et al, 1994;Chen et al, 2006;Chen and Chen, 2007;Dai and Chen, 2010). With extensions, exergy is also developed to study labor (Sciubba, 2001;Jahangir et al, 2016), population (Sciubba and Zullo, 2013), capital (Sciubba, 2001;Rosen and Dincer, 2003;Sciubba, 2003;Colombo et al, 2015), and ecology (Ukidwe and Bakshi, 2007;Jiang and Chen, 2011;Chen et al, 2014;Dai et al, 2014).…”