Thermodynamics of Energy Conversion and Transport
By: edited by Stanislaw Sieniutycz, Alexis Vos
Contributors: Vos, Alexis
Publisher: Springer New York; Imprint; Springer
Published: 2000
Place of publication: New York, NY
Language: eng
Format: [electronic resource] /
Number of pages: 335
ISBN-13: 9781461212867
Description: It is becoming more and more important to manage energy resources effectively: to maximize their benefits while minimizing the negative environmental impacts. Scientist and engineers are thus faced with the problem of optimizing complex systems subject to constraints from, ecology, economics, and thermodynamics. It is chiefly to the last that the present volume is addressed. Nonequilibrium thermodynamic approaches, such as finite-time thermodynamics and Second-Law analyses, can provide realistic models and analyses that can be used to search for optimum ways to operate machines and processes. Intended for physicists, chemists, and engineers, this volume reviews the state of the art in the thermodynamics of energy conversion and transmission. Using examples from solar, thermal, mechanical, chemical, and environmental engineering, the book focuses on the use of thermodynamic criteria for optimizing energy conversion and transmission. The first set of chapters focuses on solar energy conversion; the second set discusses the transfer and conversion of chemical energy (as in internal combustion engines or distillation columns); a concluding set of chapters deals with geometric methods in thermodynamics.
Table of contents: title: Chapter 1. Conversion of radiative energy; title: Chapter 2. Thermodynamics of solar energy; title: Chapter 3. Thermodynamics of photovoltaics; title: Chapter 4. Solar buildings; title: Chapter 5. Solar buildings; title: Chapter 6. Discrete Hamiltonian analysis of endoreversible thermal cascades; title: Chapter 7. Optimal piston paths for Diesel engines; title: Chapter 8. Qualitative properties of conductive heat transfer; title: Chapter 9. Energy transfer in particle-surface collisions; title: Chapter 10. Geometrical methods in thermodynamics; title: Chapter 11. From statistical distances to minimally dissipative processes; title: Chapter 12. Distillation by thermodynamic geometry.