Money as Social Exergy

Synopsis It has been proposed that open thermodynamic systems will act to dissipate available energy gradients by self-organizing into coherent structures that, with time, evolve and develop into nested hierarchies – panarchies – that adapt to internal and external changes according to a characteristic adaptive cycle. This paper seeks to apply these ideas in the purely societal realm by investigating the role of money in economic systems. Money represents the value embodied in goods; a value that is separate from the exact nature of those goods. We suggest that money thereby liberates the ‘free value’ of economic desire and that this free value has properties analogous to energy. The result is the self-organization of structures and systems (‘econosystems’) that dissipate this ‘free value’. Econosystems act at different scales, and nested levels of econosystems form a panarchy, having effects that can be observed. In particular, it appears that money facilitates the creation of relationships between econosystem actors, increasing the connectedness of the econosystems that envelop those actors. We have identified a phenomenon whereby freed social value (i.e. money) can aggregate, or pool, at a larger econosystem scale in structures such as banks. These pools act as gradients that actors at the neighborhood scale can exploit for self-organization in the econosystem. Thus, econosystem actors appear to be freed from thermodynamic constraints by using money as a means of self-organization. However, because of these pools of aggregated social exergy, connectedness is increased at the larger scale of the econosystem. The potential consequence of this dynamic is that money may act to push larger scale econosystems toward a state of heightened vulnerability to collapse, while freeing smaller scale actors from apparent constraints. In this way, we propose that money acts to skew information feedback loops between econosystem actors and larger scale structures such as economies and ecosystems.      

Thermodynamics and process analysis for future economic scenarios

Economists are increasingly interested in forecasting future costs and benefits of policies for dealing with materials/energy fluxes, polluting emissions and environmental impacts on various scales, from sectoral to global. Computable general equilibrium (CGE) models are currently popular because they project demand and industrial structure into the future, along an equilibrium path. But they are applicable only to the extent that structural changes occur in or near equilibrium, independent of radical technological (or social) change. The alternative tool for analyzing economic implications of scenario assumptions is to use Leontief-type Input-Output (I-O) models. I-O models are unable to endogenize structural shifts (changing I-O coefficients). However, this can be a virtue when considering radical rather than incremental shifts. Postulated I-O tables can be used independently to check the internal consistency of scenarios. Or I-O models can be used to generate scenarios by linking them to econometric macro-drivers (which can, in principle, be CGE models). Explicit process analysis can be integrated, in principle, with I-O models. This hybrid scheme provides a natural means of satisfying physical constraints, especially the first and second laws of thermodynamics. This is important, to avoid constructing scenarios based on physically impossible processes. Process analysis is really the only available tool for constructing physically plausible alternative future I-O tables, and generating materials/energy and waste emissions coefficients. Explicit process analysis also helps avoid several problems characteristic of pure CGE or I-O models, viz. (1) aggregation errors (2) inability to handle arbitrary combinations of co-product and co-input relationships and (3) inability to reflect certain non-linearities such as internal feedback loops.     

浅析温差式水泵设计与应用

在遵循热力学定律前提下,设计温差式水泵,将部分废热用于做功,达到节能减排的目的。文章将阐述温差式水泵的工作原理及应用情况。     

工程热力学课程教学改革与实践

以培养厚基础、宽口径、强能力、高素质的高级专门人才为目标,对建筑环境与设备工程专业的工程热力学课程内容进行重组与优化,采用对比式教学等方法,利用多媒体等技术手段,本课程教学改革取得了较好的效果。     

二氧化碳加氢合成甲醇模拟研究

采用ASPEN PLUS11.1流程模拟软件,模拟了二氧化碳和氢气为原料合成甲醇反应过程,研究了了原料配比、压力、温度可能对反应的影响,以及对催化剂开发应该考虑的问题。为催化剂的开发及工艺设计提供一定的依据。     

Comments

This paper is a first step toward building a Packaging Recycling Index (PRI) for the commercial packaging industry. This index has two parts; the first part refers to the percentage of "recovered material" in the construction of commercial packages. The second part refers to the percentage of the packaging that may be recycled by the consumer post use. The purpose of the PRI is to construct a simple label that would indicate the "greenness" of commercial packaging by considering total thermodynamic throughput. Building on the work of Frederick (1995) this work attempts to correct societal misunderstandings about product usage by looking at entropy rather than price as a measure of efficiency. This paper uses packaging data from Kell Container in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin to develop the initial index as described above.     

过冷器前节流中间补气空气源热泵性能模拟研究

为了解决空气源热泵在低温工况下性能衰减、排气温度过高和制热不足等问题,以过冷器前节流中间补气空气源热泵循环系统为研究对象,建立了以带补气单螺杆压缩机为热力系的循环理论数学模型,给出了中间平衡补气压力的计算流程,并对系统参数进行了模拟计算。结果表明：与不补气压缩系统相比,补气对系统COP、制热量的提升具有明显作用;压缩机的补气口越靠近吸气结束位置,系统性能参数越好;在蒸发温度-25 ℃情况下,补气与过冷器过冷侧液体出口的温差降低6 ℃,压力损失系数从0.42增加到0.82,COP提升了14%左右。因此,在能够保证过冷器正常运行的情况下,尽可能减小补气口与过冷器过冷侧液体出口的温差,尽量减少补气过程中的压力损失,有利于补气热泵系统性能的提升。研究结果可为过冷器空气源热泵系统的设计提供理论支持。     

溶液热力学理论在企业市场竞争中的应用探讨

在微观世界中，物质的某些运动行为和规律与人类社会的经济活动存在着类似性，如溶液中的相与市场对应；溶液中的物质分子与市场中的企业对应；物质的化学势可以类比于企业的竞争势等。这种类比能给企业市场竞争以多方面的有益启示。     

A rigorous periodization of ‘big’ history

‘Big’ history is the time between the Big Bang and contemporary technological life on Earth. The stretch of big history can be considered as a series of developments in systems that manage ever-greater levels of energy flow, or thermodynamic disequilibrium. Recent theory suggests that step-wise changes in the work accomplished by a system can be explained using steady-state non-equilibrium thermodynamics. Major transitions in big history can therefore be rigorously defined as transitions between non-equilibrium thermodynamic steady-states (or NESSTs). The time between NESSTs represents a historical period, while larger categories of time can be identified by empirically discovering breaks in the rate of change in processes underlying macrohistorical trends among qualities of NESSTs. Two levels of periodization can be identified through this procedure. First, there are two major eons: cosmological and terrestrial, which exhibit qualitatively different kinds of historical scaling laws with respect to NESST duration and the gaps between NESSTs: the first eon decelerating, the second accelerating. Accelerating rates of historical change are achieved during the Terrestrial Eon by the invention of information inheritance processes. Second, eras can also be defined within Earth history by differences in the scaling of energy flow improvement per NESST. This is because each era is based on a different kind of energy source: the material era depends on nuclear fusion, the biological era on metabolism, the cultural era on tools, and the technological era on machines. Periodizing big history allows historians to uncover the mechanisms which trigger the innovations and novel organisations that spur thermodynamic transitions, as well as the mechanisms which keep historical processes under control.     

Thermoeconomics: Beyond the Second Law

Physicist Erwin Schrödinger's (1945) What is Life? has inspired many subsequent efforts to explain biological evolution, especially the evolution of complex systems, in terms of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the concepts of ‘entropy’ and ‘negative entropy’. However, the problems associated with this paradigm are manifold. Here some of these problems will be highlighted and briefly critiqued. ‘Thermoeconomics’, by contrast, is based on the proposition that the role of energy in biological evolution should be defined and understood not in terms of the Second Law but in terms of such economic criteria as ‘productivity’, ‘efficiency’, and especially the costs and benefits (or ‘profitability’) of the various mechanisms for capturing and utilizing available energy to build biomass and do work. Thus thermoeconomics is fully consistent with the Darwinian paradigm. Economic criteria provide a better account of the advances (and recessions) in bioenergetic technologies than does any formulation derived from the Second Law.