Thermodynamics And The Destruction Of Natural Resources

This book is a unique, multidisciplinary effort to apply rigorous thermodynamics fundamentals, a disciplined scholarly approach, to problems of sustainability, energy, and resource uses. Applying thermodynamic thinking to problems of sustainable behavior is a significant advantage in bringing order to ill-defined questions with a great variety of proposed solutions, some of which are more destructive than the original problem. The articles are pitched at a level accessible to advanced undergraduates and graduate students in courses on sustainability, sustainable engineering, industrial ecology, sustainable manufacturing, and green engineering. The timeliness of the topic, and the urgent need for solutions make this book attractive to general readers and specialist researchers as well. Top international figures from many disciplines, including engineers, ecologists, economists, physicists, chemists, policy experts and industrial ecologists among others make up the impressive list of contributors.

This book is a unique, multidisciplinary, effort to apply rigorous thermodynamics fundamentals, a disciplined scholarly approach, to problems of sustainability, energy, and resource uses. Applying thermodynamic thinking to problems of sustainable behavior is a significant advantage in bringing order to ill defined questions with a great variety of proposed solutions, some of which are more destructive than the original problem. The articles are pitched at a level accessible to advanced undergraduates and graduate students in courses on sustainability, sustainable engineering, industrial ecology, sustainable manufacturing, and green engineering. The timeliness of the topic, and the urgent need for solutions make this book attractive to general readers and specialist researchers as well. Top international figures from many disciplines, including engineers, ecologists, economists, physicists, chemists, policy experts and industrial ecologists among others make up the impressive list of contributors"

This book is a unique, multidisciplinary, effort to apply rigorous thermodynamics fundamentals, a disciplined scholarly approach, to problems of sustainability, energy, and resource uses. Applying thermodynamic thinking to problems of sustainable behavior is a significant advantage in bringing order to ill defined questions with a great variety of proposed solutions, some of which are more destructive than the original problem. The articles are pitched at a level accessible to advanced undergraduates and graduate students in courses on sustainability, sustainable engineering, industrial ecology, sustainable manufacturing, and green engineering. The timeliness of the topic, and the urgent need for solutions make this book attractive to general readers and specialist researchers as well. Top international figures from many disciplines, including engineers, ecologists, economists, physicists, chemists, policy experts and industrial ecologists among others make up the impressive list of contributors. About the Authors Bhavik R. Bakshi holds a dual appointment as a Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at The Ohio State University, and Vice Chancellor and Professor of Energy and Environment at TERI University, New Delhi. He is also the Research Director of the Center for Resilience at Ohio State. From 2006 to 2010, he was a Visiting Professor at the Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai, India. He has written over 100 refereed publications in areas such as Process Systems Engineering and Sustainability Science and Engineering. Timothy G. Gutowski is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA. He was the Director of MIT's Laboratory for Manufacturing and Productivity (1994-2004), and the Associate Department Head for Mechanical Engineering (2001-2005). From 1999 to 2001 he was the chairman of the National Science Foundation - Department of Energy panel on Environmentally Benign Manufacturing. He has written over 150 technical publications, and seven patents and patent applications. He is the editor of Advanced Composites Manufacturing (1997). Dusan P. Sekulic is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Kentucky. He is a fellow of ASME. Dr. Sekulic is a consulting professor at the Harbin Institute of Technology, PR China. He is the author of over 150 refereed research publications, more than a dozen book chapters, and the author of the book Fundamentals of Heat Exchanger Design (jointly with R.K. Shah), published in English, and in Chinese. He is the editor of the books Advances in Brazing: Science, Technology and Applications and Fundamentals of Heat Exchanger Design (2003) co-edited with Ramesh K. Shah.

The book begins with a brief review of equilibrium systems and transport and rate processes, then covers the following areas: theory of nonequilibrium thermodynamics; dissipation function; entropy and exergy; analysis and case studies on using the second law of thermodynamics; economic impact of the nonequilibrium thermodynamics theory; analysis of transport and rate processes; membrane transport; dissipative structures and biological systems; and other thermodynamic approaches and extended nonequilibrium thermodynamics. Summarizes new applications of thermodynamics as tools for design and optimisation Covers second law and exergy analysis for sustainable development Promotes understanding of the coupled phenomena of natural processes

This book examines ways of assessing the rational management of nonrenewable resources. Integrating numerous methods, it systematically exposes the strengths of exergy analysis in resources management. Divided into two parts, the first section provides the theoretical background to assessment methods, while the second section provides practical application examples. The topics covered in detail include the theory of exergy cost and thermo-ecological cost, cumulative calculus and life cycle evaluation. This book serves as a valuable resource for researchers looking to investigate a range of advanced thermodynamic assessments of the influence of production processes on the depletion of nonrenewable resources.

This book is about the mechanisms of wealth creation, or what we like to think of as evolutionary "progress." The massive circular flow of goods and services between producers and consumers is not a perpetual motion machine; it has been dependent for the past 150 years on energy inputs from a finite storage of fossil fuels. In this book, you will learn about the three key requirements for wealth creation, and how this process acts according to physical laws, and usually after some part of the natural wealth of the planet has been exploited in an episode of "creative destruction." Knowledge and natural capital, particularly energy, will interact to power the human wealth engine in the future as it has in the past. Will it sputter or continue along the path of evolutionary progress that we have come to expect? Can the new immaterial wealth of information and ideas, which makes up the so-called knowledge economy, replace depleted natural wealth? These questions have no simple answers, but this masterful book will help you to understand the grand challenge of our time. Praise for Energy, Complexity and Wealth Maximization: “... people who run the modern world (politicians, economists and lawyers) have a very poor grasp of how it really works because they do not understand the fundamentals of energy, exergy and entropy ... those decision-makers would greatly benefit from reading this book ...” - Vaclav Smil, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of Manitoba “... A grandiose design; impressive, worth reading and reflecting!” - Prof. Dr. Ernst Ulrich von Weizäcker, Founder of Wuppertal Institute; Co-President of the Club of Rome, Former Member of the German Bundestag, co-chair of the UN’s Resource Panel “... The book is a must read for concerned citizens and decision makers across the globe.” - RK Pachauri, Founder and Executive Vice Chairman, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and ex-chair, International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

In The Birth of Energy Cara New Daggett traces the genealogy of contemporary notions of energy back to the nineteenth-century science of thermodynamics to challenge the underlying logic that informs today's uses of energy. These early resource-based concepts of power first emerged during the Industrial Revolution and were tightly bound to Western capitalist domination and the politics of industrialized work. As Daggett shows, thermodynamics was deployed as an imperial science to govern fossil fuel use, labor, and colonial expansion, in part through a hierarchical ordering of humans and nonhumans. By systematically excavating the historical connection between energy and work, Daggett argues that only by transforming the politics of work—most notably, the veneration of waged work—will we be able to confront the Anthropocene's energy problem. Substituting one source of energy for another will not ensure a habitable planet; rather, the concepts of energy and work themselves must be decoupled.

Capitalism likes us to believe in the steady, inevitable march of progress, from the abacus to the iPad. But the historical record tells of innumerable roads not taken, all of which could have led to better, more equal worlds, and still can. Academic and activist Bob Hughes puts flesh on the bones of the idea that 'another world is possible', using as evidence the technology that capitalism claims as quintessentially its own: the computer in all its forms. Contrary to popular belief capitalism does not do innovation well – instead suppressing or appropriating it. This book shows that great innovations have never emerged from capitalism per se, but always from the utopian moments that occur behind the capitalist's back. And when it does embrace an innovation, the results are often the diametric opposite of what the innovators intended. In this thorough and meticulous work Hughes argues that if we only prioritized equality over materialism then superior and more diverse technologies would emerge leading to a richer more sustainable world. Bob Hughes is an academic, activist, and author. Formerly he taught electronic media Oxford Brookes University and now spends his time researching and campaigning against inequality. He is author of Dust or Magic, a book for digital multimedia workers, about how people "do good stuff with computers." He is a member of No One is Illegal, which campaigns for the total abolition of immigration controls, for whom he has written many articles.

A comprehensive assessment of the methodologies of thermodynamic optimization, exergy analysis and thermoeconomics, and their application to the design of efficient and environmentally sound energy systems. The chapters are organized in a sequence that begins with pure thermodynamics and progresses towards the blending of thermodynamics with other disciplines, such as heat transfer and cost accounting. Three methods of analysis stand out: entropy generation minimization, exergy (or availability) analysis, and thermoeconomics. The book reviews current directions in a field that is both extremely important and intellectually alive. Additionally, new directions for research on thermodynamics and optimization are revealed.