Bejan (mechanical engineering, Duke U., North Carolina) starts with the bad news: thermodynamics has hit a brick wall, because its scientific foundations have eroded out from under it: fuels are not given, environments are not infinite, and energy transformations do not occur in isolation. The good news is that such a crisis, a period of instability, is a perfect opportunity to create a new scientific basis for it. The new thermodynamics, he says, will take account of the architecture of reality, and will predict and optimize the readjustment of fossil and renewal fuel streams based on uniform principles. He is ready to roll, and is willing to take students with him who have already learned the fundamentals of the discipline. Among his topics are the first and second laws of thermodynamics, entropy generation or exergy destruction, single-phase and multi-phase systems, chemically reactive systems, solar power, refrigeration, and irreversible thermodynamics. Earlier editions appeared in 1987 and 1996.
