Antonio Valero

University of Zaragoza | UNIZAR · Department of Mechanical Engineering

This paper reviews the fundamentals of the thermoeconomic diagnosis theory. Thermoeconomic diagnosis is one of the main applications of the exergy cost theory used to identify the causes of additional resource consumption of a system due to inefficiencies in its components, published in the late 1990s. Thermoeconomic diagnosis has usually been appl...

The path toward energy transition requires many metals, some of which are scarce in nature or their supply is controlled by a few countries. The European and Spanish situations are particularly vulnerable because of the scarcity of crucial geological mineral resources, especially those known as critical. In this context, the recovery of metals from...

Thermoeconomics was born as a combination of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and Economics in search of the process of cost formation. Linking the physical origin of cost with irreversibility is the central paradigm of Thermoeconomics. Irreversibility is best identified in energy systems, so Thermoeconomics has concentrated on them without extendi...

Circular thermoeconomics encompasses the physical principles of the circular economy (strictly spiral economy), industrial symbiosis, and second law costing and diagnosis of complex energy systems. This article describes a new software tool for circular thermoeconomics distributed as a MATLAB package. The software implements the algorithms describ...

Thermoeconomics can be defined as the field of interaction between economics and thermodynamics through the second law. It can be useful in energy system improvement and environmental damage prevention. Thermoeconomic methodologies are usually applied to assess the exergetic and monetary cost of the internal flows and final products of energy syste...

Soil degradation, affecting around 38% of the world's cropland, threatens the global food supply. Due to the soil's complexity, the measure of soil degradation that involves the loss of soil fertility due to crop system management processes represents an unsolved problem. Exergy is a property with the potential to be used in soil fertility and/or d...

Este artículo hace una revisión crítica del informe de la AIE titulado El rol de los minerales críticos en la transición hacia energías limpias. El objetivo principal de este informe es identificar los minerales y metales clave que podrían generar problemas de suministro y cuellos de botella en una transición energética limpia. La AIE establece una...

There are alternatives to compensate for the exponential increase in raw material consumption. Substitution is the most straightforward one, replacing an element with another that is less critical or more abundant. This situation will be explored for electric vehicles, different renewable energies, printed circuit boards and lighting, as each techn...

Currently, different scenarios are being created to analyse how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and so limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels. To reach this goal, we must reduce consumption and change the foundations of our energy system, and the most effective way seems to increase the use of renewable energy so...

Humankind has relied on the extraction of different raw materials for centuries, starting with iron, copper or gold to a large number of metals and fossil fuels currently used in multiple sectors, thanks to technological development. Still, this change has also led to other issues, such as increasing CO2 at a global level and climate change. One wa...

For millions of years, nature has formed and concentrated minerals in the deposits we know today. Such deposits represent the natural stock or cradle from a life cycle assessment point of view. The conventional cradle-to-grave analysis can be combined with grave-to-cradle analysis using Thanatia, a resource-exhausted planet, as a starting point. Us...

Fossil fuel and mineral demand have considerably increased in the last few decades, even reaching an exponential trend. Oil and natural gas consumption accounts for more than half of the total demand in recent years, the Middle East and Saudi Arabia being the main producing regions. Regarding unconventional fossil fuels, the United States is the co...

In this chapter, we will analyse the global historical extraction of mineral resources from an exergy point of view. Exergy allows us to assess the degradation caused by the extraction of minerals by humans considering the resource quality. The loss of total mineral wealth from 1900 to 2018 was around 200 Gtoe. This means that we would need a minim...

It is broadly true that matter here on Earth, like energy everywhere, is conserved but degrades. If the energy of a system degrades until it reaches equilibrium with its environment, so also does the Earth’s stock of economically valuable non-renewable materials of various kinds. However, there is a big difference, inasmuch as the Sun renews the en...

Fossil fuels and minerals are non-renewable resources. What’s available on Earth to extract is finite and is determined by several factors such as technology, global resources and economic value. This section will first introduce the different terms used in the mining industry related to raw materials and how they are formed. Then, we will proceed...

The hidden costs of technologies, considering the physical quality of the elements of which they are composed, will be analysed through a thermodynamic approach. First, the thermodynamic rarity of electrical and electronic devices is calculated and compared with the wastes this sector generates. Additionally, this same analysis is carried out with...

Thanatia es ciencia. Es la descripción de este planeta si seguimos esquilmando su geodiversidad. El cambio climático y la digitalización conducen a la movilidad eléctrica, las energías renovables con sus baterías, la robotización, el internet de las cosas... Hay más teléfonos móviles que habitantes en el mundo, con una vida media de dos años. Ya se...

This paper reviews the fundamentals of the Exergy Cost Theory, an energy cost accounting methodology to evaluate the physical costs of products of energy systems and their associated waste. Besides, a mathematical and computationally approach is presented, which will allow the practitioner to carry out studies on production systems regardless of th...

In the last century, the economic growth has been accompanied by a worldwide diffusion of polymers for multiple applications. However, there is a growing attention to the environmental pollution and energy consumption linked to the unconditional use of plastic. In the present work, exergy is used as a measure of the resource consumption during the...

Earth has become a huge mine, with a greater quantity and variety of fundamental mineral resources being extracted year after year. Technology, from electric cars to everyday electrical equipment, consume vast amounts of scarce raw materials. On a planet with limited resources, are these minerals being properly assessed? Will there be enough raw ma...

A conventional passenger car demands almost 50 different types of metals, along other raw materials. Some ofthese metals, such as tantalum, indium, niobium or rare earths elements, are considered critical by the EuropeanCommission and many other institutions. Additionally, their functional recycling is practically absent. Thetransition to fully ele...

This paper explores the advantages of using relative free energy instead of exergy to build a mathematical theory of thermodynamic costs to diagnose malfunctions in thermal systems. This theory is based on the definition of a linearized characteristic equation that represents the physical behavior of each component. The physical structure of the sy...

This paper presents a thermodynamic vision of the depletion of mineral resources. It demonstrates how raw materials can be better assessed using exergy, based on thermodynamic rarity, which considers scarcity in the crust and energy requirements for extracting and refining minerals. An exergy analysis of the energy transition reveals that, to appro...

Energy systems comprise complex networks structures, where the irreversibility of a process depends on those of other processes. Thermoeconomics provides tools to identify and to quantify the additional consumption of resources caused by the irreversibility increase of their components. The fuel impact formula is the mathematical expression of the...

The depletion of the mineral capital is a topic of concern because the worldwide demand for minerals is rapidly increasing. Moreover, since the energy consumption increases as ore grades decline, there is growing stress on energy resources and the environment associated with mining activities. The energy costs associated with the exhaustion of mine...

A way to assess today’s mineral patrimony is to evaluate how much mining energy is saved today because of having concentrated mines instead of finding the minerals dispersed throughout the crust. This can be assessed through the so-called exergy replacement costs (ERC), which are a measure of the exergy required to extract and concentrate minerals...

Desde tiempos de la colonia, América Latina ha sido una región que tradicionalmente ha suministrado materias primas que han servido para el desarrollo económico y productivo de otras regiones del mundo. Minerales de América Latina, como hierro, alumi-nio, oro, plata y cobre, entre otros, han llegado a ser "commodities" altamente valorados en un mun...

There is growing concern about the decline of the ore grade in mines and the increased energy usage for processing and refining metals. In the limit, where no concentrated deposits exist, minerals must be obtained from bare rock. A method for quantitatively assessing the ''free bonus'' granted by nature in providing concentrated minerals in mines a...

En la Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Cambio Climático 2015 (COP21) se acordó que el incremento de la temperatura media global no debe superar los 2ºC respecto a la temperatura de niveles preindustriales. Una manera de alcanzar este objetivo implica la incorporación masiva de las llamadas tecnologías verdes, en especial en la generación...

The transition from a Linear to Circular Economy has become a societal challenge to be tackled. However, the increasing complexity of materials and products increases also the sophistication of the circular economy systems required to deal with them. These systems are very resource consuming, therefore, a rigorous evaluation of the impact of every...

A conventional passenger vehicle demands more than 50 different types of metals, some of them such as tantalum, indium, niobium or rare earths elements (REE), are considered critical by the European Commission. Besides this, their functional recycling is practically absent. Moreover, the transition to fully electric vehicles will require more elect...

A conventional passenger vehicle demands more than 50 different types of metals, some of them such as tantalum, indium, niobium or rare earths elements (REE), are considered critical by the European Commission. Besides this, their functional recycling is practically absent. Moreover, the transition to fully electric vehicles will require more elect...

Current End-of-Life Vehicle (ELV) recycling processes are mainly based on mechanical separation techniques. These methods are designed to recycle those metals with the highest contribution in the vehicle weight such as steel, aluminum, and copper. However, a conventional vehicle uses around 50 different types of metals, some of them considered crit...

Abstract Current metal recycling techniques for end-of-life vehicles (ELV) are based on mechanical treatments to mainly recover steel, aluminum, copper, and zinc alloys. Such techniques facilitate compliance with the ELV European Directive (2000/53/EC) target of achieving recyclability quotes of up to 85%. However, a vehicle can use more than 60 me...

Current End-of-Life Vehicle (ELV) recycling processes are mainly based on mechanical separation techniques. These methods are designed to recycle those metals with the highest contribution in the vehicle weight such as steel, aluminum, and copper. However, a conventional vehicle uses around 50 different types of metals, some of them considered crit...

Material flow analysis is a key tool to quantify and monitor natural resource use. A very visual way to undertake such analyses representing the mineral trade of a certain nation or continent is through the well-known Sankey diagrams, in which the mineral resources that are extracted, imported, exported, recycled and consumed within the given bound...

Modern living is heavily dependenton mining activities. Having a secure and stable supply of mineral resources has proven to be a key for societies, especially during periods of war. A total of 39 raw materials are identified as ‘strategic’ for the current European defense industry and 16 are additionally considered critical due to economic reasons...

This paper shows the common developments performed by the Institute of Thermal Technology and the Research Centre for Energy Resources and Consumption regarding the assessment of natural resource degradation. Particularly, it shows the last model of the Szargut's Reference Environment, which was updated with new geological and geochemical informati...

Moving towards a low-carbon economy will imply a considerable increase in the deployment of green technologies, which will in turn increase the demand of certain raw materials. In this paper, the material requirements for 2050 scenarios are assessed in terms of exergy to analyze the impact in natural resources in each scenario and identify which te...

Latin America has always been a region of great interest not only for its rich-multicultural heritage, and diverse flora and fauna, but also for its natural resources that have become valuable commodities worldwide. In this paper an exergy-based analysis is used to investigate the cost of mineral depletion. By applying exergy replacement costs (ERC...

•From 1995 to2013 inLA 20, iron production represented 72% of the total production intones,while in Mtoe it only represented 13%, and the contrary was observed fora luminum.Thus, the loss of natural stockofLA-20 was mainly causedb yaluminum and not by iron. •Economic revenues of the sales of minerals (GDPextractive/GDPtotal) was far from equal when...

Latin America has traditionally been a raw material supplier since colonial times. In this paper, we analyze mineral exports from an exergoecology perspective from twenty countries in Latin American (LA-20). We apply material flow analysis (MFA) principles along with the concept of the exergy replacement cost (ERC), which considers both quantity an...

The changing material composition of cars represents a challenge for future recycling of end-of-life vehicles (ELVs). Particularly, as current recycling targets are based solely on mass, critical metals increasingly used in cars might be lost during recycling processes, due to their small mass compared to bulk metals such as Fe and Al. We investiga...

The Exergy Cost theory was proposed in 1986 by Valero et al. in their “General theory of energy saving” (1986). This theory has been recognized as a powerful tool in the analysis of energy systems, and it has been applied to the assessment of alternatives for energy saving, local optimization, and thermoeconomic diagnosis. The paper introduces a ne...

The aim of the second part of the paper is to integrate the new approach to compute exergy costs introduced in the first part into Thermoeconomic Input-Output analysis (henceforth ExIO). ExIO is a methodology derived from the Exergy Cost theory to analyze the cost formation process of energy-intensive consumption systems. This paper introduces a ne...

Among the existing methodologies to assess future availability of mineral resources, the Hubbert peak model is a direct approach that can provide useful information about non-fuel mineral depletion using BAU production trends. Using lithium as a case study, the influence on the fluctuations on extractable resources has been analyzed. Accounting onl...

This paper makes a review of current raw material criticality assessment methodologies and proposes a new approach based on the second law of thermodynamics. This is because conventional methods mostly focus on supply risk and economic importance leaving behind relevant factors, such as the physical quality of substances. The new approach is propos...

This poster tries to answer the following questions: Is the energy transition going to be really renewable? Will there be a net exergy reduction of non-renewable resources consumption?What is the weight of mineral resources in this transition? What are the most demanded metals to build GreenTechnologies?

Latin America has been a region of great interest not only for its rich-multicultural heritage and diverse flora and fauna, but also for its natural resources that have become valuable commodities worldwide. In fact, Latin American countries have valuable reserves of copper, silver, tin, bauxite, nickel and other non-fuel minerals that are needed i...

The aim of the chapter is to introduce thermoeconomics and thermoecology, which are methodologies based on exergy and cost. After introducing thermoeconomics, the concept of exergy cost and a theory that enables its calculation is presented. Exergy cost of a flow within a system is the amount of exergy resources consumed by that system that are nee...

Depletion of non-renewable natural resources is one of the factors leading mining industry to reach sustainability. Meeting this challenge entails the assessment of mineral resources as well as the mining operations needed to produce commodities. In this chapter, an exergy analysis of six minerals (aluminium, copper, chromium, gold, iron and mangan...

Any activity around the world as well as further development of humankind relies on natural resources. The primary deposits, which represent the work that nature offers us, are essential for current and future civilizations. There are several examples of ancient civilizations that collapsed due to the depletion of local natural resources; the most...

Natural resources can be evaluated from different points of view. One of them, and perhaps the most commonly known is the economic point of view. Nevertheless, the price-fixing mechanisms, rarely take into account the concrete physical characteristics which make them valuable. But natural resources have at least two physical features which make min...

Resumen: La extracción de recursos naturales en América Latina ha sido y sigue siendo una actividad que tiene diversas implicaciones tanto en aspectos sociales como culturales, económicos y políticos. El presente trabajo busca, a través del uso del concepto de Coste exergético de reposición (ERC), desarrollado por Valero et al., determinar el coste...

Utilizing renewable energies is the promising solution to the environmental problems which are brought about due to fossil fuel consumption. The fact that these kinds of energies are intermittent can be overcome with using energy storage systems. Wind energy coupled with compressed air energy storage systems is one of the best candidates in this re...

When we think about energy, we consider it in terms of quantity. However, in a resource-constrained world, energy must also be appreciated from the point of view of quality, which is essentially a measure of its usefulness, or its ability to do work. In order to account for the quality and not just the quantity of energy, we need to measure exergy....

In the mining and metallurgical industry, with each ore, products, by-products and wastes appear. Allocations among products when one or more by-products come about in a mining or metallurgical process are based either on tonnage or on commercial prices. Both ways of allocating costs entails disadvantages that are analysed in this paper. Besides a...

Natural non-renewable resources such as minerals are becoming increasingly depleted against a backdrop of intense industrialisation. Through the exergy analysis and thermoeconomic tools it is possible to assign a figure to the degree of depletion. This is because the exergy replacement cost represents the effort needed by Man to return minerals to...

Biodiesel from used cooking oil (UCO) is one of the most sustainable solutions to replace conventional fossil fuels in the transport sector. It can achieve greenhouse gas savings up to 88% and at the same time reducing the disposal of a polluting waste. In addition, it does not provoke potential negative impacts that conventional biofuels may event...

Natural non-renewable resources, such as minerals, are becoming increasingly depleted against a backdrop of intense industrialisation. Through the exergy analysis and thermoeconomic tools it is possible to assign a figure to the degree of depletion. This is because the exergy replacement cost represents the effort needed by humankind to return mine...

This paper shows how exergy can be used to assess the mineral balance of a country and at the same time assess its mineral resource sustainability. The advantage of using such an approach is that the quality of the resources is taken into account, as opposed to the conventional procedure that uses tonnage as a yardstick. The exergoecology method ev...

The second law of thermodynamics and, specifically, exergy analysis have been traditionally used for the assessment and optimization of energy systems. Nevertheless, as shown in this paper, exergy could also constitute a powerful tool for the evaluation of mineral commodities. That said, new or re-defined exergy-based concepts need to be developed....

This paper describes a way to account for mineral depletion through exergy replacement costs, which are defined as the exergy required to replace minerals from a complete dispersed state back to the initial conditions of composition and concentration in which they were originally found and with the best available technologies. The advantage of usin...

Is Gaia becoming Thanatia, a resource exhausted planet? For how long can our high-tech society be sustained in the light of declining mineral ore grades, heavy dependence on un-recycled critical metals and accelerated material dispersion? These are all root causes of future disruptions that need to be addressed today. This book presents a cradle-to...

In this paper, an exergy analysis of nickel processing is performed through the application of two methodologies: TEC (thermo-ecological cost) and ERC (exergy replacement cost). The merging of both methodologies allows to have a complete assessment of non-fuel mineral processing. TEC evaluates the cumulative consumption of non-renewable exergy requ...

Is Gaia becoming Thanatia, a resource exhausted planet? For how long can our high-tech society be sustained in the light of declining mineral ore grades, heavy dependence on un-recycled critical metals and accelerated material dispersion? These are all root causes of future disruptions that need to be addressed today. This book presents a cradle-to...

Thermoeconomics can play a key role in the analysis of eco-industrial parks because it provides a systemic approach and, by using exergy, expresses matter and energy flows in the same physical units. Besides methodologies developed for thermal systems analysis, diagnosis and optimization, application of thermoeconomics to industrial symbiosis requi...

Exergy accounting of energy and material flows for the two main routes of nickel production (from laterites and sulphides ores) is performed so as to identify the main losses which take place in the overall chain. Accordingly, the chemical exergy of the different raw materials and utilities involved in the production of nickel is calculated. The re...