Department of Mechanical Engineering IIT Madras

ME5105 Applied Thermodynamics- Tutorial on Exergy

(Assume temperature and pressure of ambient as 300 K and 1 bar, where required)

1. A solid block of mass 10 kg at a temperature of 600 K loses heat to the atmosphere.

The final temperature of the block at the end of the process is the same as that of
atmosphere(equal to 300 K). The specific heat of the solid block may be taken as 500
J/kg K. Find the fraction of unavailable energy during the process. Also find the
irreversibility I ( = Lost work) during this process.

2. From a hot reservoir at 800 K, 100 kJ of heat is extracted. Find the maximum
reversible work for the process. If a temperature difference of 50 K prevails between
the reservoir and the working fluid, and another 20 K difference exists between the
sink and the working fluid, evaluate the loss of work due to heat transfer across
finite temperature difference.

3. Two streams of air mix adiabatically in a mixing tube. Stream 1 has a mass flow rate
of 2 kg/s and enters the mixing device at 1 bar, 100oC and Stream 2 enters at a mass
flow rate of 1.6 kg/s at 1 bar and 50oC. Calculate the rate of entropy generation and
the maximum reversible work for the process. What is the rate of irreversibility for
the process? (For air R = 287 J/kg K and Cp = 1005 J/kg K.)

4. In the feed water heater of a power plant, saturated bleed steam enters at a
pressure of 5 bar. Liquid water enters at the rate of 20 kg/s, at 5 bar and 30oC. At the
exit of the feed water heater, water leaves as saturated liquid. During the process,
rate of heat loss to the ambient is 0.5 MW. Find the change in exergy (availability
function) between the inlet and exit streams.

5. In a steam generator, hot products of combustion enter at 1200 K and exit at 700 K.
The flow rate of combustion flue gas is 1000 kg/s and its specific heat may be taken
as 1 kJ/kg K. The heat supplied by the flue gas is fully used to produce saturated
steam from saturated water at 250oC. The latent heat of water at 250oC is equal
to1716.2 kJ/kg. Calculate the rate of entropy generation and irreversibility (rate of
lost work) during the process. What is the cause of this irreversibility?

6. An adiabatic turbine using air as working fluid (R = 287 J/kg K and Cp = 1005 J/kg K)
has inlet conditions of 10 bar, 850oC and exit conditions of 1 bar, 250oC. Evaluate the
availability function (exergy) of air inlet and exit of the turbine, neglecting KE and
PE.Calculate the isentropic efficiency and the II law efficiency of the turbine. Also
evaluate lost work per kg of air flow.
7. Five kg of air at 4 bar, 100oC expands to the state of 2 bar, 40oC. Find the reversible
work for the process. How much of this work is useful? Evaluate the change in the
availability of air between the initial and final states. If there is an additional heat
transfer of 50 kJ with a reservoir at 400 K, find the increase in useful work due to the
heat transfer.

8. In a counter flow heat exchanger, oil is cooled from 200oC to 80oC, while water is
heated from 10o C to 30o C. The specific heat of water is 4.18 kJ/kg K while that of oil
is 2 kJ/kg K. The flow rate of oil is 0.25 kg/s. Neglecting KE,PE and pressure variation
in both fluids and assuming no heat losses to the ambient, find the rate of exergy
destruction and the second law efficiency for the process.