Emergy science provides methods to evaluate any process in which inputs are transformed into some new output. Transformation processes are ubiquitous in nature and in the economies of people. To date, economic and natural processes of many kinds have been evaluated, but the production of humans and their cultural information has only begun to be explored. This paper investigates in detail the e...

This work is based on a previous Life Cycle Analysis [Cherubini et al., 2005], which has been thoroughly revised and updated taking into account the rapidly changing world magnesium market. In particular, Chinese Mg production by means of the Pidgeon process has surged, and now accounts for almost three quarters of the total world production. The authors intend to focus here on the results of t...

A Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) was assembled for gold production extending from the formation of gold-ore deposits through the production of semi-refined gold-silver bullion. Inputs traditionally considered in life cycle assessment (LCA) such as energy, materials, and capital were counted along with geologic inputs and labor. Emergy, rather than traditional LCA methods, was used to make inventory...

Since traditional cost-benefit analysis does not include environmental variables in consideration, the concept of emergy was used to measure all direct and indirect energy to produce a product. In emergy analysis, environmental, social and economic variables are included and indexes are calculated for comparison for several systems. In this paper, emergy and financial ratios are used to determi...

The ecological role of tidal freshwater marshes as important fish spawning and nursery habitat has been studied, although fish utilization of associated intertidal mudflats have not been as extensively investigated. Using the same sampling methodology, fish surveys of three separate areas of the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C. were conducted using a boat based electrofishing unit. The sport...

Emergy-emdollar evaluation is introduced including concepts and instructions for making calculations. Because of the universal hierarchy of energy, work on any scale of the environment or within the economy may be compared on a common basis by expressing products and services in emergy units. Emergy is the available energy (exergy) of one kind previously required to be used up directly and indi...

It is necessary to minimize the environmental impact and utilize natural resources in a sustainable and efficient manner in the early design stage of developing an environmentally-conscious design for a heating, ventilating and air-conditioning system. Energy supply options play a significant role in the total environmental load of heating, ventilating and air-conditioning systems. To assess th...

The linguistic-mathematical tools developed to give an appropriate mathematical formulation to the Maximum Em-Power Principle, together with the already shown validity of the Rules of Emergy Algebra under variable conditions, suggested a possible development of a General Ordinal Theory of Complex Systems. This can ideally be thought of as an appropriate “transposition” of theorems and concepts ...

Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) represents one of the four steps of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology, which is a standardized procedure (ISO 14040:2006) to estimate the environmental impacts generated by the production, use and delivery of goods and services and final waste disposal. The calculation of emergy using LCI databases is acknowledged to be of great advantage to improve the accu...

In this study, emergy evaluation was used to analyze the Peruvian ecological – economic system. The material and energy flows were evaluated in units of solar emergy. The performance of the Peruvian system was assessed through emergy-based indices. The main calculated indicators are the following: (a) Emergy/USD ratio = 1.01 E+13 sej/dollar; (b) Emergy Yield Ratio (EYR) = 9.69; and (c) Environm...