Related papers: Rethinking loss of available work and Gouy-Stodola…
The well-known Gouy-Stodola theorem states that a device produces maximum useful power when working reversibly, that is with no entropy production inside the device. This statement then leads to a method of thermodynamic optimization based…
We present the relatively less known thermodynamic concept of exergy in the context of ecology and sustainability. To this end, we first very briefly outline thermodynamics as it arose historically via engineering studies. This enables us…
Exergy, or availability, is a thermodynamic concept representing the useful work that can be extracted from a system evolving from a given state to a reference state. It is also a system metric, formulated from the first and the second law…
Exergy is a very important thermodynamic quantity in several fields such as economy, engineering, ecology and yet it has attracted little attention in pure physics. One of the main problems of the currently used definition of exergy is its…
Thermodynamics teaches that if a system initially off-equilibrium is coupled to work sources, the maximum work that it may yield is governed by its energy and entropy. For finite systems this bound is usually not reachable. The maximum…
The available enthalpy is an early form of the modern thermodynamic concept of exergy, which is the generic name for the amount of work obtainable when some matter is brought to a state of equilibrium with its surroundings by means of…
We present the fundamental equation for a system and for a process, and by considering irreversibility within the system, we show that the lost work concept emerges naturally from the formalism. We then argue that if irreversibility is…
We propose a new form of the Second Law inequality that defines a tight bound for extractable work from the non-equilibrium quantum state. In classical thermodynamics, the optimal work is given by the difference of free energy, what…
We present a new outlook on the climate system thermodynamics, studying some of its macroscopic properties in terms of the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics. We review and clarify the notion of efficiency of the climate system by…
Exergy is a thermodynamic quantity useful to obtain information on the work from any process. The analyses of irreversibility are important in the designing and development of the productive processes for the economic growth, but they play…
The second law of thermodynamics uses change in free energy of macroscopic systems to set a bound on performed work. Ergotropy plays a similar role in microscopic scenarios, and is defined as the maximum amount of energy that can be…
We propose to apply the entropy generation $(\dot S_{gen}$) concept to a mechanical system: the well-known simple pendulum. When considering the ideal case, where only conservative forces act on the system, one has $\dot S_{gen}=0$, and the…
Self-organization is a process where order of a whole system arises out of local interactions between small components of a system. Emergy, spelled with an 'm', defined as the amount of (solar) energy used to make a product or service, is…
The recent researches in non equilibrium and far from equilibrium systems have been proved to be useful for their applications in different disciplines and many subjects. A general principle to approach all these phenomena with a unique…
One of the main issues that real energy converters present, when they produce effective work, is the inevitable entropy production. Within the context of Non-equilibrium Thermodynamics, entropy production tends to energetically degrade…
After the justification of the maximum entropy approach for equilibrium thermodynamic system, and of a maximum path entropy algorithm for nonequilibrium thermodynamic systems by virtue of the principle of virtual work, we present in this…
Thermodynamics is commonly presented as a theory of macroscopic systems in stable equilibrium, built upon assumptions of extensivity and scaling with system size. In this paper, we present a universal formulation of the elementary…
We study the reduction in total entropy, and associated conversion of environmental heat into work, arising from the coupling and decoupling of two systems followed by processing determined by suitable mutual feedback. The scheme is based…
The ideas of thermodynamics have proved fruitful in the setting of quantum information theory, in particular the notion that when the allowed transformations of a system are restricted, certain states of the system become useful resources…
In many real-world situations, there are constraints on the ways in which a physical system can be manipulated. We investigate the entropy production (EP) and extractable work involved in bringing a system from some initial distribution $p$…