Thermoeconomics and the Design of Heat Systems

TLDR

A companion paper discusses detailed applications. The paper formulates thermodynamics–economics interactions to promote wise use of nonrenewable energy in complex systems. The authors employ essergy and internal economy concepts to evaluate and trade off dissipation versus capital costs, extending optimization to multi‑zone, multi‑degree‑of‑freedom thermodynamic systems.

Abstract

This paper formulates the interactions between thermodynamics and economics for complex systems in a manner which assures a wise use of nonrenewable energy resources. The concept of “essergy” (generalized potential work) is used to reduce all thermodynamic processes to a common basis of evaluation and comparison. The concept of “internal economy” is used as a means of estimating the economic value of essergy, thus permitting a designer to trade essergy dissipation against capital expenditure in the main dissipative zones of a thermodynamic system. This approach extends the classical optimization problem of balancing running expenses against fixed charges of single-zone, single-degree-of-freedom systems to stagewise as well as interconnected multi-zone multidegrees-of-freedom systems. A companion paper discusses some detailed applications.