Exergy and the Economic Process

Physical work generation requires the existence of a heat gradient, according to the universal notion of the Carnot Heat Engine; also the corner stone of the exergy concept. Heat gradient availabilities fundamentally drive systems’ evolution. However, exergy is consumed irreversibly, via its gradual...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEnergy procedia Vol. 97; pp. 51 - 58
Main Author Karakatsanis, Georgios
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Elsevier Ltd 01.01.2016
Subjects
Anthropocene
Carnot Heat Engine
degradation
economic scarcity
entropy
exergy
heat gradient
Physical work
transition
Physical work
Anthropocene
entropy
heat gradient
exergy
economic scarcity
degradation
Carnot Heat Engine
transition
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Summary:Physical work generation requires the existence of a heat gradient, according to the universal notion of the Carnot Heat Engine; also the corner stone of the exergy concept. Heat gradient availabilities fundamentally drive systems’ evolution. However, exergy is consumed irreversibly, via its gradual transformation to entropy. Extending Roegen's postulations [16], it is argued that exergy consumption founds economic scarcity, via: (a) human difficulty to produce large heat gradients on the Earth and (b) irreversible depletion of existing ones. Additionally, in the emerging Anthropocene epoch, exergy upgrades to a core concept for interpreting thermodynamically natural resource degradation and energy paradigm transitions.
ISSN:1876-6102
1876-6102
DOI:10.1016/j.egypro.2016.10.018