Exergy evolution of the mineral capital on earth - circe

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2 STARTING POINT, OBJECTIVES AND SCOPE are not in practice recoverable. Only when a combination <strong>of</strong> natural processes has worked toge<strong>the</strong>r to produce an enrichment, is an ore to be found. And <strong>the</strong>se complex processes operate very slowly when compared with <strong>the</strong> whole life-span <strong>of</strong> our species so far. Hence, it is clear <strong>the</strong> non-renewable nature <strong>of</strong> <strong>mineral</strong> resources, at least from a human perspective. The 20 th century was marked by great technological innovations leading to <strong>the</strong> consumption and fur<strong>the</strong>r dispersion <strong>of</strong> huge amounts <strong>of</strong> <strong>mineral</strong> resources previously concentrated in natural deposits. This fact pushed up <strong>the</strong> economies <strong>of</strong> industrialized countries, but also raised <strong>the</strong> concern about resources scarcity. Probably, <strong>the</strong> possibility <strong>of</strong> running out <strong>of</strong> energy resources has provoked <strong>the</strong> most worries, especially due to <strong>the</strong> sharp rise <strong>of</strong> fuel prices. However non-fuel resources are also being exhausted very rapidly, as shown by Morse [230]: only in <strong>the</strong> US, over <strong>the</strong> span <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> last century, <strong>the</strong> demand for metals grew from a little over 160 million tons to about 3,3 billion tons. The general attitude that has governed in <strong>the</strong> past was that <strong>the</strong> earth is nothing more than resources to be used. Adam Smith’s invisible hand [321] has been a guiding principle for those who believe that free trade or market will ultimately lead to a natural order <strong>of</strong> things. Never<strong>the</strong>less, in <strong>the</strong> early seventies <strong>the</strong> first Arab oil embargo, <strong>the</strong> peaking <strong>of</strong> oil production, toge<strong>the</strong>r with <strong>the</strong> studies <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> Club <strong>of</strong> Rome (Forrester [96] and Meadows et al. [218]), started <strong>the</strong> alarm bells ringing regarding resources scarcity as <strong>the</strong> limit to economic growth [221]. In fact, <strong>the</strong> <strong>the</strong>ory that economic growth is irrevocably constrained by <strong>the</strong> finiteness <strong>of</strong> natural resources came at least 1 a century before with <strong>the</strong> British economist Thomas Malthus [206]. The <strong>the</strong>ory <strong>of</strong> Malthus was that <strong>the</strong> efforts <strong>of</strong> an expanding population to produce food on a limited land base would suffer diminishing returns, and if reproduction was not checked through moral restraint it would be checked by famine, war and pestilence. Malthus contemporary David Ricardo relativized <strong>the</strong> Malthusian’s absolute scarcity <strong>of</strong> land. He showed that an expanding competitive economy could always turn to lower-quality land, <strong>the</strong>reby increasing <strong>the</strong> required labor to produce food and driving up its cost [302]. But classical economists were mainly focused on land and did not really faced <strong>the</strong> problem <strong>of</strong> depletion <strong>of</strong> <strong>mineral</strong>s and o<strong>the</strong>r non-renewable resources. It was not until <strong>the</strong> beginning <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> 20 th century, that <strong>the</strong> US conservation movement feared that progress would end because <strong>the</strong> rapacious present generation would consume <strong>the</strong> next <strong>of</strong> its needed natural resources. In <strong>the</strong> 1930s, Harold Hotelling [145] put numbers to <strong>the</strong> not very rigorous statements <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> conservationists. According to Hotelling, resources would be depleted at a declining rate, and <strong>the</strong>ir price would rise at a rate equal to <strong>the</strong>ir owners’ opportunity rate <strong>of</strong> interest. In <strong>the</strong> seventies, <strong>the</strong> Club <strong>of</strong> Rome came into being and <strong>the</strong> first attempt at a global model by J. Forrester was pubilshed in World Dynamics [96]. The limits to Growth wealth. 1 The French physiocrats came to <strong>the</strong> conclusion in <strong>the</strong> XVIII century that land is <strong>the</strong> source <strong>of</strong> all
Economic growth and <strong>the</strong> consumption <strong>of</strong> natural resources 3 by Meadows et al. [218] followed in 1972, receiving great publicity. The works <strong>of</strong> Meadows et al. in 1972 and later updates in 1993 [217] and 2004 [219], argue that <strong>the</strong> current exponential growth cannot longer be supported as natural goods become depleted. Through <strong>the</strong> World3 computer model, different scenarios <strong>of</strong> resources consumption, pollution, population, policy, etc. were developed. The study claimed that if no immediate actions are undertaken, an economical collapse is foreseeable in <strong>the</strong> near future. The truth is that even if <strong>the</strong> consumption <strong>of</strong> natural <strong>capital</strong> has increased dramatically, evidence until to date has not really supported <strong>the</strong> idea that natural resources depletion has stopped economic growth. Some authors such as Barnett and Morse [20] or Scott and Pearse [302] appealed to <strong>the</strong> role <strong>of</strong> technological progress in improving <strong>the</strong> efficiency <strong>of</strong> extractive processes and redefining available resources. They stated that <strong>the</strong>re is no evidence for <strong>the</strong> hypo<strong>the</strong>sis that natural resources will lead to reduction <strong>of</strong> economic growth. Solow [326] argued that substitution <strong>of</strong> <strong>capital</strong> goods <strong>of</strong> natural resources in production processes reduces resource requirements and, in general, technical change may overcome limits imposed on economic activities in <strong>the</strong> environment. On <strong>the</strong> contrary, Costanza and Daly [65], Ayres and Nair [17] or Cleveland and Ruth [59], believe that technology will not overcome resource scarcity and environmental degradation, since human <strong>capital</strong> ultimately is derived from and sustained by energy, materials and ecological services. Until now, natural <strong>capital</strong> has been treated as a free good, but nowadays it is becoming <strong>the</strong> limiting factor in development. Champan and Roberts [53] argue also that resource substitution might be valid in <strong>the</strong> short term, but will fail in <strong>the</strong> long term when <strong>the</strong>re is equal resource scarcity on all substitutable materials. Some attempts have been made to measure <strong>the</strong> economic costs <strong>of</strong> depletion and degradation and use <strong>the</strong>m to correct standard measures <strong>of</strong> economic welfare such as GDP (see for instance Ahmad, El Serafy and Lutz [2]; Daly and Cobb [70]; Costanza [64]; Van Dieren [75]). Although <strong>the</strong> debate on how national accounting should be extended towards environmental accounting is still open, all approaches reflect that when depletions <strong>of</strong> natural <strong>capital</strong>, pollution costs, and income distribution effects are accounted for, <strong>the</strong> improving <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> economy is seriously questioned. As we face <strong>the</strong> new century, <strong>the</strong> question <strong>of</strong> whe<strong>the</strong>r resource scarcity will constrain economy is still in <strong>the</strong> air. But <strong>the</strong> rapid economic development <strong>of</strong> Asia and <strong>the</strong> desire for a higher living standard in <strong>the</strong> developing world demands an even greater consumption <strong>of</strong> natural resources toge<strong>the</strong>r with rapid technological progress to prevent increasing scarcity <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> different commodities. Our society is based on an inefficient use <strong>of</strong> energy and materials, since <strong>the</strong>re is a lack <strong>of</strong> awareness <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> limit. If resources are limited, <strong>the</strong>ir management must be carefully planned in order to be consistent with <strong>the</strong> sustainability doctrine. But for that purpose, we need to know how many resources are available on earth and at which rate <strong>the</strong>y are being consumed. A responsible management can only be based thus on a comprehensive
Page 1: Mechanical Engineering Ph.D. Thesis
Page 4 and 5: Accordingly, in this work three imp
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Page 10 and 11: The thermochemistr
Page 12 and 13: Contents Contents . . . . . . . . .
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Page 16 and 17: II The thermodynam
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Page 21: 1.1 Introduction Chapter 1 Starting
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Page 27 and 28: Exergy and <strong
Page 29 and 30: The Exergoecology approach 9 nous t
Page 31 and 32: The Exergoecology approach 11 Solar
Page 33 and 34: Scope, objectives and structure <st
Page 35: Scientific papers derived from this
Page 39 and 40: Chapter 2 The geochemistry
Page 41 and 42: The atmosphere 21 Table 2.1. Compos
Page 43 and 44: The hydrosphere 23 The atmosphere i
Page 45 and 46: The hydrosphere 25 Table 2.3. Inven
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Page 53 and 54: The hydrosphere 33 the</str
Page 55 and 56: The hydrosphere 35 Table 2.11. Area
Page 57 and 58: The continental crust 37 2.5 The co
Page 59 and 60: The continental crust 39 Table 2.13
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Grigor’ev’s mineral</st
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A new model of <st
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Mathematical repre
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Results 91 • The orders o
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Results 93 Table 3.5: Mineralogical
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Results 101 Table 3.6. Crustal abun
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Summary of <strong
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106 THE RESOURCES OF THE EARTH Tabl
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108 THE RESOURCES OF THE EARTH nowa
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110 THE RESOURCES OF THE EARTH exce
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112 THE RESOURCES OF THE EARTH Tida
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114 THE RESOURCES OF THE EARTH al.
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116 THE RESOURCES OF THE EARTH volu
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120 THE RESOURCES OF THE EARTH Coal
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122 THE RESOURCES OF THE EARTH Figu
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124 THE RESOURCES OF THE EARTH In t
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132 THE RESOURCES OF THE EARTH ing
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134 THE RESOURCES OF THE EARTH •
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136 THE RESOURCES OF THE EARTH •
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Chapter 5 Thermodynamic models for
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The reference environment 143 5.2.1
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The reference environment 145 envir
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The reference environment 147 where
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The reference environment 149 where
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The reference environment 151 As ex
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The reference environment 153 5.2.3
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The reference environment 155 Table
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The exergy of <str
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The exergy of <str
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Prediction of Enth
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Prediction of Enth
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Prediction of Enth
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Prediction of Enth
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Prediction of Enth
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Prediction of Enth
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Summary of <strong
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Chapter 6 The ther
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The properties of
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The properties of
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The properties of
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The properties of
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The properties of
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The properties of
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The properties of
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The properties of
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An approach to the
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The exergy of <str
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Summary of <strong
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Chapter 7 The time factor in <stron
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The exergy distance 229 However, an
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The tons of <stron
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The Hubbert peak applied to exergy
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The exergy loss of
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The exergy loss of
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The exergy loss of
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The exergy loss of
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Conversion of exer
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Summary of <strong
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Summary of <strong
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Chapter 8 The exergy evolut
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The exergy loss of
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A prediction of <s
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A prediction of <s
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A prediction of <s
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A prediction of <s
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A prediction of <s
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A prediction of <s
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A prediction of <s
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Final reflections 321 consequently
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Final reflections 323 problems are
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Final reflections 325 8.5.3 The nee
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Summary of <strong
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Summary of <strong
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332 CONCLUSIONS of
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334 CONCLUSIONS In the</str
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336 CONCLUSIONS is lost. Therefore,
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338 CONCLUSIONS According to our ca
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340 CONCLUSIONS which it is based w
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342 CONCLUSIONS have associated an
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344 CONCLUSIONS dation velocity, <s
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346 CONCLUSIONS fuel composition th
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348 CONCLUSIONS The main activity t
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Appendix A Additional calculations
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Input data. Mineralogical compositi
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Calculation of ave
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Calculation of ave
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Calculation of ave
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Calculation of ave
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Calculation of <st
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Estimation of <str
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Estimation of <str
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Estimation of <str
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Estimation of <str
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Estimation of <str
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Exergy calculation
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Exergy calculation
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Exergy calculation
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Australian fossil fuel production 4
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World’s fuel production 405 % <st
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World’s fuel production 407 A.8.4
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The Hubbert peak applied to world p
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Fuel consumption in the</st
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Nomenclature, Figures, Tables and R
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416 NOMENCLATURE ˙D : Minimum exer
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418 NOMENCLATURE T : Temperature [K
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420 NOMENCLATURE r w : River water
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422 LIST OF FIGURES 7.1 Conceptual
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424 LIST OF FIGURES 8.21 Actual exe
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426 LIST OF TABLES 3.6 Crustal abun
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428 LIST OF TABLES 8.6 Specific exe
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References [1] Abare. Energy update
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433 [29] BGS. Minerals - what makes
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435 [59] C. Cleveland and M. Ruth.
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437 [87] ESPASA, editor. Encicloped
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439 [115] P. H. Gleick. The world
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441 [142] R. Höll, M. Kling, and E
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443 [171] K. S. Johnson. Industrial
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445 [200] J. Lovelock. The revenge
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447 [227] T. Miyano and N. J. Beuke
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449 [253] A. Ortiz. Desarrollo econ
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451 [281] R. Rivero and M. Garfias.
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453 [306] D. Shaw, G. Reilly, J. Mu
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455 [330] V. Stepanov. Chemical ene
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457 [357] M. Tranter. Treatise on G
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459 [380] P. Vieillard. Modèle de
Page 481:
461 [406] M. J. Wilhelm and K. C. W
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Exergy evolution of the mineral capital on earth - circe

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