An innovative application of extended exergy analysis into an industrial park

Exergy is a thermodynamic term used to account all possible useful work theoretically throughout one process when it is brought into equilibrium with its environment. It however cannot directly incorporate non-physical flows, which can be accounted by extensions of the exergy consumption method. Extended exergy, which builds a bridge between thermal and anthropic dimensions, can both measure resource consumption and economic system. In this study, we applied extended exergy analysis to analyze an industrial park, including material consumption, social investment, and environmental influence. The total extended exergy consumption in the study park amounts to 2.52 EJ. The material-based exergy occupies the largest exergy consumption, followed by capital exergy, environmental remediation exergy, and labor exergy in decreasing order. The exergy capacity was proposed to depict the conversion ability from exergy consumption into economic benefits. In the study area, electronic information industry has the largest exergy capacity with a value of 70 RMB/GJ, indicating a high conversion power from exergy to money. New energy vehicles and parts manufacturing occupies bottom rung in terms of exergy capacity. From the view of material consumption, other industry consumed a lot more exergy compared to electronic information industry; for the environmental remediation, other industry has the lowest exergy capacity, indicating it discharged more pollutants than other clusters to output the same amount of money. Therefore, other industry needs to be urgently transformed and upgraded. The study could help to optimize industrial structure and environmental management in industrial parks.