Interação da teoria ascendancy com a termoeconomia: aplicação a sistemas industriais

Abstract

The present work addresses the interaction between the Ascendancy theory with Thermoeconomics. The growing concern for energy savings has encouraged the development of systems assessment and diagnostic techniques, based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the concept of exergy. In this context came the set of methodologies called Thermoeconomics, whose objective is to allocate costs and optimize economically the thermal systems, based on thermodynamic concepts of the system operation. Thermoeconomics uses exergy property, which can be defined as the ability to produce a useful effect. The growth and development of ecosystems is subject to restrictions and, in addition to exergy, other properties, such as Ascendency, can be described as an objective function that indicates the health (state) of ecosystems, synthesizing information on energy and matter flows in relation to an ideal theoretical state. This study details the Ascendency objective function, which generally applies to industrial ecology, showing that living systems tend to self-organize by increasing their Ascendency. The Ascendency was described mathematically, and its formulation was adapted for industrial energy systems, and applied to simple thermodynamic systems. The information provided by Ascendency was compared to those provided by the thermoeconomic analysis of a Rankine Cycle. Four configurations with different degrees of interconnection between the equipment were studied, keeping the final product of the system constant, and then the same system was studied with different performance considerations for the turbine, with constant final product. The results showed that, when comparing different configurations of the same degree of interconnection between equipments and similar yields, the configuration with the highest value of Ascendancy has a greater possibility of optimization.