IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v1y2009i4p1444-1463d6608.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Tenuous Use of Exergy as a Measure of Resource Value or Waste Impact

Author

Listed:
  • Kyrke Gaudreau

    (Environment and Resource Studies, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1, Canada)

  • Roydon A. Fraser

    (Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1, Canada)

  • Stephen Murphy

    (Environment and Resource Studies, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1, Canada)

Abstract

Exergy is a thermodynamic concept that has been widely promoted for assessing and improving sustainability, notably in the characterization of resources and wastes. Despite having many notable benefits, exergy is often misused by authors who tend to apply it as an intrinsic characteristic of an object ( i.e. , as a static thermodynamic variable). Using both theoretical and empirical evidence the authors present five key limitations that must be overcome before exergy can be applied to characterize objects: (1) the incompatibility between exergy quality and resource quality ; (2) the inability of exergy to characterize non work-producing resources via the concentration exergy; (3) the constraints placed on the derivation of exergy; (4) problems with the exergy reference environment; and (5) the multiple perspectives applied to exergy analysis. Until the limitations are addressed, exergy should only be used for its original purpose as a decision making tool for engineering systems analysis.

Suggested Citation

  • Kyrke Gaudreau & Roydon A. Fraser & Stephen Murphy, 2009. "The Tenuous Use of Exergy as a Measure of Resource Value or Waste Impact," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 1(4), pages 1-20, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:1:y:2009:i:4:p:1444-1463:d:6608
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/1/4/1444/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/1/4/1444/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Liao, Wenjie & Heijungs, Reinout & Huppes, Gjalt, 2012. "Thermodynamic analysis of human–environment systems: A review focused on industrial ecology," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 228(C), pages 76-88.
    2. Christopher J. Koroneos & Evanthia A. Nanaki & George A. Xydis, 2012. "Sustainability Indicators for the Use of Resources—The Exergy Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 4(8), pages 1-12, August.
    3. Sobhy Khedr & Melchiorre Casisi & Mauro Reini, 2022. "The Thermoeconomic Environment Cost Indicator (i ex-TEE ) as a One-Dimensional Measure of Resource Sustainability," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(6), pages 1-14, March.
    4. Martin Nwodo & Chimay J. Anumba, 2021. "Exergy-Based Life Cycle Assessment of Buildings: Case Studies," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(21), pages 1-15, October.
    5. Kyrke Gaudreau & Roydon A. Fraser & Stephen Murphy, 2012. "The Characteristics of the Exergy Reference Environment and Its Implications for Sustainability-Based Decision-Making," Energies, MDPI, vol. 5(7), pages 1-17, July.
    6. Roozbeh Nia, Ali & Awasthi, Anjali & Bhuiyan, Nadia, 2023. "Integrate exergy costs and carbon reduction policy in order to optimize the sustainability development of coal supply chains in uncertain conditions," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 257(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:1:y:2009:i:4:p:1444-1463:d:6608. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.