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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.
List of contents
I Conversion of Radiative Energy.- 1 Statistical Mechanics of Solar Energy Conversion.- 2 Thermodynamics of Solar Energy Conversion into Work.- 3 Thermodynamics of Photovoltaics.- 4 Some Methods of Analyzing Solar Cell Efficiencies.- 5 Solar buildings.- II Conversion of Thermal and Chemical Energy.- 6 Discrete Hamiltonian Analysis of Endoreversible Thermal Cascades.- 7 Optimal Piston Paths for Diesel Engines.- 8 Qualitative Properties of Conductive Heat Transfer.- 9 Energy Transfer in Particle-Surface Collisions.- III Energy in Geometrical Thermodynamics.- 10 Geometrical Methods in Thermodynamics.- 11 From Statistical Distances to Minimally Dissipative Processes.- 12 Distillation by Thermodynamic Geometry.
Summary
The early chapters centre on solar energy conversion, the second section discusses the transfer and conversion of chemical energy, while the concluding chapters deal with geometric methods in thermodynamics.
