Energy and the Environment

This book describes the state of the art at the interface between energy and environmental research. The contributing authors are some of the world leaders in research and education on energy and environmental topics. It begins with the latest trends in applied thermodynamics, the methods of energy analysis, entropy generation minimization and thermoeconomics. It continues with the most modern developments in energy processing and conservation techniques, heat transfer augmentation devices, inverse thermal design, combustion and heat exchangers for environmental systems. The environmental impact of energy systems is documented in a diversity of applications such as the flow of hazardous waste through cracks and porous media, thermally induced flows through coastal waters near power plants, and lake ecology in the vicinity of pumped storage systems. The text outlines research directions such as the manufacturing of novel materials from solid waste, advances in radiative transport, the measurement of convective heat transfer in gas turbines and environmentally acceptable refrigerants. The book provides engineering design data that make a concrete statement on topics of world wide interest such as toxic emissions, the depletion of energy resources, global environmental change (global warming), and future trends in the power generation industries.