Exergy or Availability

Introduction

Sometimes this is referred to as looking at Second Law efficiency.

What we are doing here is we are looking at processes and determining how close our process is
approximating a reversible process (one without irreversibilities)

Basically what exergy analysis enables us to do is to perform analysis of systems and determine where
we could make improvements.

For a review, let’s take a look at the different efficiencies thus far in our course

Net work output W net , out

Thermal efficiency= =
Total heat input Q¿
In terms of a pictorial representation of application to a heat engine we talked about having a source
and a sink.

The source is supplying the heat to the heat engine. The heat then flows through our heat engine and
through this process we are able to extract some work out

On the low side we reject some heat into a sink.

We come up with the efficiency of this.

TL
ηth ,rev =1−
TH
We also talked about the Carnot Efficiency

The Carnot efficiencies were for reversible processes and we quantified the Carnot efficiency in terms of
the temperature in Kelvin.

We also looked at the isentropic efficiencies or the adiabatic efficiencies for different components that
we might have within the cycle that we are examining
 ηturbine , ηcompressor , η pump , ηnozzle

These are often referred to as First Law efficiencies.

We will now look at different type of efficiency and we will refer to this as being a second law efficiency.

And in doing this it will take us towards an area called exergy analysis which enable us like I said earlier
to compare a cycle that we might be looking at to how that cycle would be performing if it was
performing without any irreversibilities, in a reversible manner.

Exergy – Definition

Exergy is a property that enables us to determine the useful work potential of a given amount of energy
at some state. We reference it, by convention, to a Dead State which is P0 = 101.325 kPa and T0 = 25 oC
with properties P0, T0, h0, u0, s0.

Exergy enables us to measure the amount of useful work that exist at a particular state with respect to
some dead state.

The concept of exergy itself is a European term that was derived in the 1950s and it was preceeded by a
term that is coined at MIT called availability (1940s).

Exergy of Availability is the amount of useful work you could get out of a system at a specified state by
placing a reversible heat engine between it and the dead state. This allows us to examine a process or
cycle and determine where we have room for improvement.

The concept of exergy is that it enables us to determine the amount of work that we could get out of the
system (reversible work potential). We could then compare it to the actual work that we do get out of
the system (Actual Work < Reversible Work). What it does is it shows us if we could improve our system
and identify ways that we could improve our system.

Example Problem
Thermal energy reservoir at 1500 K supplies heat at 41.7 kJ/s. Compute the exergy assuming the
environmental temperature is 25 oC.

TL 25+273
ηth ,rev =1− =1− =0.8013
TH 1500

(
Exergy=W out , rev =ηth ,rev ∙ Q¿=( 0.8013 ) 41.7
kJ
s)=33.4 kW

Reversible Work and Irreversibility

When we are dealing with exergy and exergy analysis, one thing that we do need to consider is the
amount of work that we are doing on the surroundings. Exergy itself considers performance with
respect to some surroundings (dead state). If we have boundary work we must consider the work done
on the surroundings.

Now what we need to do is given that we’re considering the performance of the system with respect to
the dead state if we are doing work on the surroundings so that would be the case where we have a
control volume that is changing with time throughout our process and it would be one of either
expanding or contracting if it’s contracting the surroundings is doing work on our control volume but
let’s assume that our control volume is expanding well in that case we are doing work on the
surroundings and the work that we perform on the surroundings can be quantified as the dead state
pressure multiplied by a volume change.

W sur =P0 ( V 2−V 1 )

And so what we need to do when we’re evaluating the amount of useful work that a system can do we
need to take the work that we’re doing on the surroundings into account. So, the amount of useful work
that we get is

W useful =W −W sur =W −P0 ( V 2−V 1 )

where W is the actual work being performed so that is something that we have to be careful about if we
have a control volume that is changing volume we need to take into account the fact that we may be
doing work on the surroundings and there are two more terms that we should think about..

reversible work – maximum amount of useful work that can be produced

irreversibility – exergy that is lost or destroyed through a process

We want to minimize irreversibilities as engineers. These are losses in our system. Irreversibility is
defined in two ways depending on if we are looking at a system that is producing work or a system that
we are doing work on it.

If the system produces work,

I =W out ,rev −W out , useful

W out ,rev is your ideal state and will always be larger than actual or useful work that you get out of your
system and consequently I is always positive.

If the system absorbs work,

I =W ¿ ,useful −W ¿ ,rev

W ¿ ,rev is always less than the the actual or useful work that you actually putting in and consequently I is
always positive as well.

The above is the quantification of exergy lost or destroyed. What we are referring to is the
irreversibilities that exist within our system. Our job as engineers is to minimize those irreversibilities.

Second Law Efficiency

The second law efficiency is the ratio of the thermal efficiency of an actual engine to that of a reversible
heat engine.

ηth
η II =
ηth ,rev
Another way that we can write the second law efficiency if we look at what exergy itself is

Remember: Exergy is the amount of useful work that can be recovered. Thus,

Exergy Recovered
η II =
Exergy Supplied
Second law efficiency is the ratio of exergy that we are able to recover to the amount of exergy that is
supplied at a given state.

What we need to do is come up with useful method of being able to quantify the exergy associated with
different forms of energy (PE, KE, U, Wf, …)
If we are to exa