
7.3.1 Exergy Aspects
In this section, we list five important aspects of the exergy concept:
Exergy is a measure of the departure of the state of a system from that of the 
environment. It is therefore an attribute of the system and environment together. 
However, once the environment is specified, a value can be assigned to exergy in 
terms of property values for the system only, so exergy can be regarded as a prop-
erty of the system. Exergy is an extensive property.
The value of exergy cannot be negative. If a system were at any state other than the 
dead state, the system would be able to change its condition spontaneously toward 
the dead state; this tendency would cease when the dead state was reached. No work 
must be done to effect such a spontaneous change. Accordingly, any change in state 
of the system to the dead state can be accomplished with at least zero work being 
developed, and thus the maximum work (exergy) cannot be negative.
Exergy is not conserved but is destroyed by irreversibilities. A limiting case is when 
exergy is completely destroyed, as would occur if a system were permitted to 
undergo a spontaneous change to the dead state with no provision to obtain work. 
The potential to develop work that existed originally would be completely wasted 
in such a spontaneous process.
Exergy has been viewed thus far as the maximum theoretical work obtainable 
from an overall system of system plus environment as the system passes from a given 
state  to the dead state. Alternatively, exergy can be regarded as the magnitude of 
the minimum theoretical work input required to bring the system from the dead 
state to the given state. Using energy and entropy balances as above, we can read-
ily develop Eq. 7.1 from this viewpoint. This is left as an exercise.
When a system is at the dead state, it is in thermal and mechanical equilibrium 
with the environment, and the value of exergy is zero. More precisely, the thermo-
mechanical contribution to exergy is zero. This modifying term distinguishes the 
exergy concept of the present chapter from another contribution to exergy intro-
duced in Sec. 13.6, where the contents of a system at the dead state are permitted 
to enter into chemical reaction with environmental components and in so doing 
develop additional work. This contribution to exergy is called chemical exergy. The 
chemical exergy concept is important in the second law analysis of many types of 
systems, in particular systems involving combustion. Still, as shown in this chapter, 
the thermomechanical exergy concept suffices for a wide range of thermodynamic 
evaluations.
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BIOCONNECTIONS  The U.S. poultry industry produces billions of pounds of 
meat annually, with chicken production accounting for over 80% of the total. The 
annual amount of waste produced by these birds also reaches into the billions of 
pounds. The waste may be more than can be managed by disposal over cropland as fertil-
izer. Some of the excess can be used to manufacture fertilizer pellets for commercial and 
domestic use. Despite its relatively low chemical exergy, poultry waste also can be used to 
produce methane through anaerobic digestion. The methane can be burned in power plants 
to make electricity or process steam. Digester systems are available for use right on the 
farm. These are positive developments for an important sector of the U.S. agricultural 
economy that has received adverse publicity for concerns over arsenic content of poultry 
waste, run-off of waste into streams and rivers, and excessive odor and fly infestation in 
the vicinity of huge farming operations.
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