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....

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....