A brief Commented History of Exergy From the Beginnings to 2004

This paper presents a brief critical and analytical account of the development of the conceptof exergy and of its applications. It is based on a careful and extended (in time)consultation of a very large body of published references taken from archival journals,textbooks and other monographic works, conference proceedings, technical reports andlecture series. We have tried to identify the common thread that runs through all of thereferences, to put different issues into perspective, to clarify dubious points, to suggestlogical and scientific connections and priorities. It was impossible to eliminate ourrespective biases that still affect the “style” of the present paper: luckily, some of ourindividual biases “cancelled out” at the time of writing, and some were corrected by ourReviewers (to whom we owe sincere thanks for the numerous and very relevant correctionsand suggestions).The article is organized chronologically and epistemologically: it turns out that the twocriteria allow for a quite clear systematization of the subject matter, because thedevelopment of the exergy concept was rather “linear”.This work is addressed to our Colleagues who are involved in theoretical research,industrial development, and societal applications of exergy concepts: if they extract fromthis article the idea of an extraordinary epistemological uniformity in the development ofthe concept of exergy, our goal will be achieved. The other addressees of this paper areGraduate Students taking their first steps in this field: in their case, we hope thatconsultation of our paper will prompt them to adopt and maintain throughout their career ascholarly valid method of research, which implies studying and respecting our scientificroots (the sources) but venturing freely and creatively into unknown territory.In the Conclusions we try to forecast future developments: this is the only part of the paperthat is an intentional expression of our own views: the previous historical-scientificexposition is instead based on verifiable facts and accepted opinions.