Categorising tools for sustainability assessment

Environmental systems analysis tools – an overview

The focus of this study is to review the latest developments and technologies on waste heat recovery of exhaust gas from internal combustion engines (ICE). These include thermoelectric generators (TEG), organic Rankine cycle (ORC), six-stroke cycle IC engine and new developments on turbocharger technology. Furthermore, the study looked into the potential energy savings and performances of those technologies. The current worldwide trend of increasing energy demand in transportation sector are one of the many segments that is responsible for the growing share of fossil fuel usage and indirectly contribute to the release of harmful greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It is hoped that with the latest findings on exhaust heat recovery to increase the efficiency of ICEs, world energy demand on the depleting fossil fuel reserves would be reduced and hence the impact of global warming due to the GHG emissions would fade away.

Technologies to recover exhaust heat from internal combustion engines

Goal, Scope and Background
Exergy has been put forward as an indicator for the energetic quality of resources. The exergy of a resource accounts for the minimal work necessary to form the resource or for the maximally obtainable amount of work when bringing the resource’s components to their most common state in the natural environment. Exergy measures are traditionally applied to assess energy efficiency, regarding the exergy losses in a process system. However, the measure can be utilised as an indicator of resource quality demand when considering the specific resources that contain the exergy. Such an exergy measure indicates the required resources and assesses the total exergy removal from nature in order to provide a product, process or service.

In the current work, the exergy concept is combined with a large number of life cycle inventory datasets available with ecoinvent data v1.2. The goal was, first, to provide an additional impact category indicator to Life-Cycle Assessment practitioners. Second, this work aims at making a large source of exergy scores available to scientific communities that apply exergy as a primary indicator for energy efficiency and resource quality demand.

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Applying cumulative exergy demand (CExD) indicators to the ecoinvent database

This paper reviews on the possibilities of researches in the field of exergy analysis in various usable sectors where vapor compression refrigeration systems are used. Here, it is found that exergy depends on evaporating temperature, condensing temperature, sub-cooling and compressor pressure. It also depends on environmental temperature. Nowadays, hydrocarbons are considered as refrigerant having low ODP and GWP, and these are considerable in the aspect of exergy analysis. Refrigerants R 407a, R 600a, R 410a and R 134a are considered and analyzed with respect to exergy efficiency. Mixtures of hydrocarbons with R134a also show better performance with respect to other refrigerants. Among the components of the vapor compression system, much research showed that major part of exergy losses is occurred in the compressor. Nanofluid and nanolubricant cause to reduce the exergy losses in the compressor indirectly.

A review on exergy analysis of vapor compression refrigeration system

This paper presents a brief critical and analytical account of the development of the concept of exergy and of its applications. It is based on a careful and extended (in time) consultation of a very large body of published references taken from archival journals, textbooks and other monographic works, conference proceedings, technical reports and lecture series. We have tried to identify the common thread that runs through all of the references, to put different issues into perspective, to clarify dubious points, to suggest logical and scientific connections and priorities. It was impossible to eliminate our respective biases that still affect the “style” of the present paper: luckily, some of our individual biases “cancelled out” at the time of writing, and some were corrected by our Reviewers (to whom we owe sincere thanks for the numerous and very relevant corrections and suggestions). The article is organized chronologically and epistemologically: it turns out that the two criteria allow for a quite clear systematization of the subject matter, because the development of the exergy concept was rather “linear”. This work is addressed to our Colleagues who are involved in theoretical research, industrial development, and societal applications of exergy concepts: if they extract from this article the idea of an extraordinary epistemological uniformity in the development of the concept of exergy, our goal will be achieved. The other addressees of this paper are Graduate Students taking their first steps in this field: in their case, we hope that consultation of our paper will prompt them to adopt and maintain throughout their career a scholarly valid method of research, which implies studying and respecting our scientific roots (the sources) but venturing freely and creatively into unknown territory. In the Conclusions we try to forecast future developments: this is the only part of the paper that is an intentional expression of our own views: the previous historical-scientific exposition is instead based on verifiable facts and accepted opinions.

Göran Wall

Papers

A brief Commented History of Exergy From the Beginnings to 2004

Exergy conversion in the Japanese society

Exergy use in the Italian society

Exergy conversion in the Swedish society

Exergy flows in industrial processes