KSEF R&D Excellence: Exergo Environomic Synthesis of Advanced Manufacturing Processes

While energy and environmental optimizations based on exergy concept of thermo economics have been under intense development within the realm of energy applications, basic exergy theory for manufacturing processes does not yet exist. Understanding of exergy interactions, especially of losses related to such diverse phenomena as metal fonning, rapid solidification, transient radiation-conduction-convection heat treatments, chemical flux interactions during oxide removal, and variety of other complex materials processing phenomena important for advanced manufacturing, regardless of whether they are energy intensive (as in some netshape and metal joining processes) or energy non-intensive (such as nano manufacturing), is as yet virtually nonexistent. At an even more fundamental level, there are up till now no physical descriptions of exergy flows in materials processing, selection of reference st~tes, and/or any analysis of the eventual existence of extrema of related objective functions. This project will develop the first integrated approach to exergo-environomic analysis for synthesis of materials processing in advanced, both energy intensive or non-intensive and environmentally sensitive manufacturing, such as is the benchmark process of Controlled Atmosphere Brazing. The proposed research will lead to pioneering development of a methodology for identifying, tracing, and optimizing exergy flows related to materials processing for advanced manufacturing. The practical goals behind this effort are the creation of engineering tools for reliable assessment of environmentally sensitive end energy intensive manufacturing processes and in particular for finding new alternatives in process development and/or development of entirely ne'Y processes regardless of their intensiveness.