Exergy Costing

For a system operating at steady state there may be a number of entering and exiting
material streams as well as both heat and work interactions with the
surroundings. Associated with these transfers of matter and energy are exergy
transfers into and out of the system and exergy destructions caused by the
irreversibilities within the system. Since exergy measures the true
thermodynamic value of such effects, and costs should only be assigned to
commodities of value, it is meaningful to use exergy as a basis for assigning
costs in thermal systems. Indeed, thermoeconomics rests on the notion that
exergy is the only rational basis for assigning costs to the interactions that a
thermal system experiences with its surroundings and to the sources of
inefficiencies within it. We refer to this approach as exergy costing.
In exergy costing a cost is associated with each exergy stream. Thus :
i =c i E i =c i ( m
C i e i)

e=c e E
C i=c e ( m
e ee )

w =c w W
C

q =c q E
C q

Where
i , E e
E are the exergy rate of entering and exiting streams of matter;
,E
W q
are the exergy transfer rate associated with work and heat transfer.
c i ,c e , c w , c q are the average costs per unit of exergy in dollars per gigajoule ($/GJ).

Note:
1. ci,k, ce,k, cw,k and cq,k the levelized costs per unit of exergy for the exergy streams
associated with the kth component.
2. These costs are known for all entering streams the costs per exergy unit of the
exiting material streams are the unknown variables.
Cost balance equation applied to the k th component:

C e ,k +C w ,k =C q , k + C i , k +Z k
e i

Where
Z k is the sum of capital investment ( Z CI
k ) and operating and maintenance expenses ( Z k ).
OM

Z k =Z CI OM
k + Zk

Or
( c e E e )k +c w , k W k=c qk E q , k + ( c i E i) k +Z k
e i