the tenuous use of exergy as a measure of resource value or waste impact(火用)作为衡量资源的脆弱的使用价值或浪费的影响.pdfVIP

Sustainability 2009, 1, 1444-1463; doi:10.3390/su1041444 OPEN ACCESS sustainability ISSN 2071-1050 /journal/sustainability Article The Tenuous Use of Exergy as a Measure of Resource Value or Waste Impact Kyrke Gaudreau 1,*, Roydon A. Fraser 2 and Stephen Murphy 1 1 Environment and Resource Studies, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1, Canada; E-Mail: sd2murph@uwaterloo.ca 2 Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1, Canada; E-Mail: rafraser@uwaterloo.ca * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: kgaudrea@uwaterloo.ca; Tel.: +1-519-729-7758; Fax: +1-519-746-0292. Received: 5 November 2009 / Accepted: 19 December 2009 / Published: 23 December 2009 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