Sustainable Evolution in an Ever-Changing Environment: General Characterization

TL;DR

This paper explores a theoretical framework linking thermodynamics and sustainability, proposing a Boltzmann-Gibbs measure as a standard for sustainable evolution in changing environments, and discusses implications for engine efficiency limits.

Contribution

It introduces a novel thermodynamic measure for sustainability based on Boltzmann-Gibbs weights and develops a fundamental perspective on banning perpetual motion machines.

Findings

The measure for sustainable evolution is a Boltzmann-Gibbs weight.

This measure acts as a local thermodynamical potential.

Reversible engine efficiency never exceeds Carnot efficiency.

Abstract

A complex interplay between the academic issue about generalization of the thermodynamics and the practical matter about setting standards for a sustainable evolution of both tailored devices and natural systems is considered. It is established that the measure for a sustainable evolution in an ever-changing environment appears as a Boltzmann-Gibbs weight. At the same time, this measure performs as a local thermodynamical potential which, at the expense of being released from the condition of entropy maximization, serves as grounds for a fundamental development of the idea of banning perpetuum mobile. It is proven that the best efficiency of each engine that operates reversibly never exceeds the efficiency of corresponding Carnot heat engine where the engine is free from necessity of a physical coupling to two heat reservoirs.