Optimizing Thermal, Chemical, and Environmental Systems

Optimizing Thermal, Chemical and Environmental Systems treats the evaluation of power or energy limits for processes that arise in various thermal, chemical and environmental engineering systems (heat and mass exchangers, power converters, recovery units, solar collectors, mixture separators, chemical reactors, catalyst regenerators, etc.). The book is an indispensable source for researchers and students, providing the necessary information on what has been achieved to date in the field of process optimization, new research problems, and what kind of further studies should be developed within quite specialized optimizations.

• Summarizes recent achievements of advanced optimization techniques
• Links exergy definitions in reversible systems with classical problems of extremum work
• Includes practical problems and illustrative examples to clarify applications
• Provides a unified description of classical and work-assisted heat and mass exchangers
• Written by a first-class expert in the field of advanced methods in thermodynamics

Stanislaw Sieniutycz is a former member of the Committee of Engineering at the Polish Academy of Sciences and also a professor of chemical engineering at the Warsaw University of Technology, Poland. His research focuses on problems of chemical, environmental, ecological, and biomechanical engineering with emphasis on analysis, control, and optimization of these systems. He is a former member of the Editorial Board of Open System and Information Dynamics and an honorary editor of the Journal of Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics. He has served as an associate editor of Advances in Thermodynamics Series and Energy & Conversion Management. He has published 12 books, 250 articles, and 152 conference papers. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Budapest, University of Bern, University of San Diego, University of Delaware, and University of Chicago.

Prof. Zbigniew Szwast (1948), PhD; ScD, has been since 2005 a Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Warsaw TU, Poland. He has received his MsD in Chemical Engineering in 1971, PhD in Chemical Engineering in 1979, and ScD (habilitation) in Chemical Engineering in 1994, all from Warsaw TU. He has been a visiting professor in US University of Stoors (Chemical Engineering) and University of Bern (Physiology, 1990). His research focuses on optimization of chemical engineering processes. He is co-author of several books.