Unlocking Better Performance with a 68-Year-Old Engineering Idea

Introduction

Imagine a world where you could maximize your potential in everything you do—work, study, and even leisure—by understanding a fundamental concept from engineering: exergy. This principle, often overshadowed by energy, holds the key to unlocking your best performance.

First, we look at some technical bohaha.

This serves as the foundation of what works and why it works.

Don't worry, it’s going to be explained so that a primary school student can understand.

Understanding Exergy

Let’s start with a basic concept: work. In physics, work involves applying force to an object to move it a certain distance.

This is how energy is transferred from you to your surroundings.

Now, let's talk about exergy. Exergy, which sounds like energy but isn't, represents the potential energy available to do work.

Unlike energy, exergy is not conserved and can be wasted, which is why understanding it is crucial.

From this, you can understand that not all of the energy available may be used for work. Not all of the energy available is used to produce desired results.

It is impossible to convert 100% of available energy into work, even for an ideal system. This is because of something called irreversibilities (which cannot be eliminated).

We already know we can’t get 100%. Let’s say we can get 70% work potential. The concern is that - we already can’t get 100%, but out of the 70% potential available to us, we’re also destroying it!

It's almost like we are limiting ourselves in our limitations.

And... this is why the understanding of exergy is crucial for both engineering and other general life applications.

In daily life, the efficiency or performance of a person can be viewed as the accomplishment of that person relative to the effort he or she puts in.

4 ways the Exergy principle applies in daily activities

Time

In daily life, exergy can also be viewed as the opportunities that we have and the exergy destruction as the opportunities wasted.

Time is the biggest asset that we have, and the time wasted is the wasted opportunity to do something useful.

Happiness

Small children are probably the happiest human beings because there is so little they can do, but they do it so well, considering their limited capabilities.

That is, children have very high exergies in their daily lives. The term “full life” also refers to 100% efficiency.

A person is considered to have a full life, and thus a very high potential, if he or she has utilized all of his or her abilities to the limit during a lifetime.

Studying (Jacking your book)

Consider a well-rested student who is planning to spend her next 4h studying and watching a 2h long movie.

From the energy point of view, it makes no difference in what order these tasks are performed. But from the exergy point of view, it makes a lot of difference.

Of these two tasks, studying requires more intellectual alertness than watching a movie does, and thus it makes thermodynamic sense to study first when the alertness is high and to watch the movie later when the alertness is lower, as shown in the figure.

A student who does it backward wastes a lot of alertness while watching the movie, and she has to keep going back and forth while studying because of insufficient alertness, thus getting less done in the same period.

Working The Mind and Body

Working the mind and body: The exergy of a person at a given time and place can be viewed as the maximum amount of work he or she can do at that time and place.

Exergy is certainly difficult to quantify because of the interdependence of the physical and intellectual capabilities of a person. The ability to perform physical and intellectual tasks simultaneously complicates things even further.

Schooling and training obviously increase the exergy of a person. Aging decreases the physical exergy.

Unlike most mechanical things, the exergy of human beings is a function of time, and the physical and/or intellectual exergy of a person goes to waste if it is not utilized at the time.

A barrel of oil loses nothing from its exergy if left unattended for 40 years. However, a person will lose much of his or her entire exergy during that period if he or she just sits back.

Conclusion

Exergy offers a unique lens to view and enhance our daily lives. By understanding and applying this principle, we can make more informed choices about how we spend our time and energy, ultimately leading to a more efficient and fulfilling life.

Here are some important points about exergy

• It is concerned with quality, much more than quantity.

• It is not conserved and in most cases, it is destroyed.

• The destruction of exergy leads to an increase in disorderliness (entropy).

• The exergy of the universe, which can be considered to be an isolated system, is continuously decreasing.

"I have only just a minute, Only 60 seconds in it, Forced upon me—can’t refuse it Didn’t seek it, didn’t choose it. But it is up to me to use it. I must suffer if I lose it. Give account if I abuse it, Just a tiny little minute— But eternity is in it." (anonymous)

Reference:

Y. A. Cengel and M. A. Boles, Thermodynamics: An Engineering Approach, 8th Edition, McGraw-Hill Education Publishers, 2014.