Scientists and engineers are nowadays faced with the problem of optimizing complex systems subject to constraints from, ecology, economics, and thermodynamics. It is chiefly to the last of these that this volume is addressed. Intended for physicists, chemists, and engineers, the book uses examples from solar, thermal, mechanical, chemical, and environmental engineering to focus on the use of thermodynamic criteria for optimizing energy conversion and transmission. The early chapters centre on solar energy conversion, the second section discusses the transfer and conversion of chemical energy, while the concluding chapters deal with geometric methods in thermodynamics.

This book describes various forms of solar energy conversion techniques in a unified way. The physical framework used to describe the various conversions is endoreversible thermodynamics, a recently developed subset of irreversible thermodynamics . It thus studies situations which are not in equilibrium and in which therefore entropy is continuously created. Nevertheless the mathematics is simple, because the authors consider only stationary situations. Most undergraduate textbooks on thermodynamics emphasize equilibrium thermodynamics and reversible processes. No entropy is created and conversion efficiencies are maximal, equal to the Carnot efficiency. For irreversible conversion processes, the reader learns only that entropy production is positive and that conversion efficiency is lower than the Carnot efficiency. But how great the entropy creation is, and how low the efficiency, is usually not expressed. Endoreversible thermodynamics gives the opportunity to calculate explicit values for a broad class of these processes, including solar energy conversion, which is particularly suited to being described in this way. The book is intended for physicists and engineers interested in renewable energy and irreversible thermodynamics.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 7th International Reversible Computation, RC 2011, held in Gent, Belgium, in July 2011. The 10 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 25 initial submissions for inclusion in the book. The papers are devoted to all aspects of reversible computation, ranging from theoretical and experimental aspects to various applications. Topics addressed are: functional language for reversible computations, logic design, reversible circuits designed by a software toolkit called RevKit, application of reversible computation to the domain of quantum circuits, and physical realizations of reversible circuits in CMOS technologies.

Scientists and engineers are nowadays faced with the problem of optimizing complex systems subject to constraints from, ecology, economics, and thermodynamics. It is chiefly to the last of these that this volume is addressed. Intended for physicists, chemists, and engineers, the book uses examples from solar, thermal, mechanical, chemical, and environmental engineering to focus on the use of thermodynamic criteria for optimizing energy conversion and transmission. The early chapters centre on solar energy conversion, the second section discusses the transfer and conversion of chemical energy, while the concluding chapters deal with geometric methods in thermodynamics.