Exergy for environment, ecology and sustainable development
Introduction
The energy sector plays a vital role in attempts to achieve sustainable development by balancing economic and social developments with environmental protection. National governments need to assess the long-term advantages and disadvantages of their available energy sources to reconcile the pressures induced by the moving towards competitive markets with the requirements for a sustainable energy-strategy. The present contribution employs thermodynamic methods of analysis to evaluate the sustainability of industrial energy and other systems [1].
There is a difference in free Gibbs energy between the energy carriers under consideration and the common reference substances in the natural environment. Exergy is a basic parameter to determine this difference. In other words, exergy is a function of the thermodynamic state of the substances under consideration and the common reference substances in the natural environment. An interaction between these substances in the environment results in exergy [2].
Exergy can identify better than energy the environmental benefits and economics of energy technologies. Exergy has an important role to play in increasing utilization of green energy and technologies [3]. Exergy is a measure of the departure of the state of a system from that of the environment. Therefore, exergy is the most appropriate connection between the second law of thermodynamics and environmental impact [4].
The evidence of the necessity to have a measurable parameter reflecting the state of the ecosystem, and allowing an estimate of the severity of its anthropogenous damage is clear now [5]. Many authors have proposed various ecosystem goal functions to be used as such ecosystem health indices: ascendancy, emergy, energy flow maximization, entropy minimization, etc. [6]. Among them one, namely exergy, is shown to have such advantages as good theoretical basis in thermodynamics, close relation to information theory, rather high correlation with others goal functions and relative easiness of computation [7], [8].
The patterns of community development have recently drawn attention regarding the sustainable management of ecosystems. Proper diagnostics on various conditions of a community, e.g. susceptibility of perturbation, recovering, maturity, etc. are essential information for setting up efficient management strategies for the target ecosystem. Especially in aquatic ecosystems, it is important to understand how communities would develop in response to changes in water quality. Communities in aquatic ecosystems are easily impressed by various natural and anthropogenic disturbances and recovery is desired [9].
Sustainable development has greatly influenced popular framings of sustainability today to meet the present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs [10]. Sustainable development requires both sustainable energy resources be used and the resources be used efficiently. Exergy methods are essential in improving efficiency, which allows society to maximize the benefits it derives from its resources while minimizing the negative impacts (such as environmental damage). Greater efficiency in utilization allows such resources to contribute to development over a longer period of time. Increased efficiency reduces environmental impacts and resource requirements (energy, material, etc.) to maintain systems to harvest energy. Thus, energy resources eventually become inexpensive and widely available [3].
Exergy of systems and processes represents a true measure of imperfection and indicates the possible ways to improve energy system and to design better ones. Therefore, exergy analysis is vital importance in the assessment of environment, ecology and sustainability. Destruction of exergy must be reduced because its assessment offers the opportunity to quantify the environmental impact and sustainable of any energy system. Energy policies and strategies must include exergy efficient systems expanding the use of renewable energy. Exergy analysis is one of the main methods and tools for elaborating environment, ecology and sustainable development policies and strategies.
Section snippets
Exergy and environment
Despite the fact that many studies appeared during the past two decades concerning the close relationship between energy and the environment, there has only recently been an increasing number of works on the linkage between the exergy and environment. Environmental problems, issues and concerns span a continuously growing range of pollutants, hazards and ecosystem degradation factors. These factors impress areas ranging from local through regional to global. The production, transformation and
Exergy and ecology
Exergy is applied for solving of different problems by using mathematical models. Exergy helps to understand and explain fundamental characteristics of ecosystems studied by theoretical ecology, and to investigate behavior and interaction of some ecosystem components. Exergy is a useful tool for ecological model parameters estimation and calibration of models. Sometimes exergy is applied to analyses the data of field observations and to determine the state of natural ecosystem [8].
Exergy as the
Exergy and sustainable development
Exergy can be accepted as a common measure of quality of natural resources. The consumption of non-renewable exergy appears not only in the final stage of the fabrication of every product but also in processes delivering semi-finished products and energy carriers to the mentioned final stage. Thus, the cumulative consumption of non-renewable exergy connected with the fabrication of the considered product and appearing in all the links of economy can be accepted as the measure of the depletion
Conclusions
The importance of exergy analysis enables communication between different professions. The purpose of this study is to have a better understanding of relation between exergy and environment, ecology and sustainable development. Exergy is a much more suitable approach than energy because the difference between energy qualities is taken into account if the exergy is calculated for a system. Exergy is a key tool for environment, ecology and sustainable development and is an efficient parameter on
Acknowledgement
The author greatly acknowledges the financial support of this work by the Karadeniz Technical University Research Fund under Grant no. 9081.
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