Thermoeconomic Coherence: A Methodology for the Analysis and Optimisation of Thermal Systems

Abstract

In the field of thermal systems, different approaches and methodologies have been proposed to merge thermodynamics and economics. They are usually referred as thermoeconomic methodologies and their objective is to find the optimum design of the thermal system given a specific objective function. Some thermoeconomic analyses go beyond that objective and attempt to find whether every component of the system is correctly designed or to quantify the inefficiencies of the components in economic terms. This paper takes another step in that direction and presents a new methodology to measure the thermoeconomic coherence of thermal systems, as well as the contribution of each parameter of the system to that coherence. It is based on the equality of marginal costs in the optimum. The methodology establishes a criterion to design coherently the system. Additionally, it may be used to evaluate how much a specific design is far from the optimum, which components are undersized or oversized and to measure the strength of the restrictions of the system. Finally, it may be extended to the analysis of uncertainties of the design process, providing a coherent design and sizing of the components with high uncertainties.