Application of the Second Law of Thermodynamics in Brazilian Residential Appliances towards a Rational Use of Energy

This article proposes the utilization of the concepts of destroyed exergy and exergy efficiency for equipment and process performance indicators that are related to the current energy planning scenario in Brazil, more specifically with energy-efficiency labelling. Several indicators associated with these concepts are discussed, including one national program that is based on labeling the energy efficiency of several residential, commercial and industrial appliances. The grades are indicated in the equipment using values from A to G. This labeling system is useful for discriminating similar technologies used for the same function; nevertheless produced by different enterprises. For this complementary analysis, two types of refrigeration methods were compared, absorption and vapor compression; however, these energy indexes alone are not sufficient parameters to select among these two technologies, because their performance indexes definition are different. To address this, our research considers the second law of thermodynamics through exergy analysis as a proper sub-index to obtain a systematic comparison between these various indicators. It is significant to highlight that seldom research studies addressed to this problem so explicitly, in an actual governmental working solution, aiming at discussing to the society the advantage of the usage of the “quality of the energy” as a complementary index to governmental and personal choices. Results indicate that it is possible to use the destroyed exergy and exergy efficiency to help select the technology that better utilizes natural resources, considering the energy matrix of the country. Appliances for water heating and air conditioning were compared from energy and exergy viewpoint, where the last gave additional information about the quality of energy conversion process, giving a completely different trend from the energy analysis alone, without the necessity to think about the energy matrix. Later this issue is addressed from both points of view. Future studies may suggest an exergy based index. The energy efficiency suggests that electrical shower (values higher than 95%) are better than gas water heaters (83% ) in using natural resources, whereas the exergy efficiency shares similar magnitudes (about 3%). A related pattern is shown for the theoretical air conditioning systems. The vapor compression systems have an energy index higher than 3, and absorption systems lower than 1. For these circumstances, the exergy efficiency shows figures nearby 30%.