New concepts in thermodynamics applied to materials in industry

Abstract

The modern thermodynamics of irreversible process applies to various kinds of “open” systems, including biological individuals or social groups. The purpose of the present conference is to study how far it can apply to industrial firms producing goods. Firms of this kind are systems with in-going fluxes of raw materials, energy and informations, and out-going fluxes of products and rejects (of matter or of energy). We will concentrate our attention on the thermodynamical evolution of materials. Physically speaking, their ther-modynamic potential (or their “phlogistic”, to use a word which was fashionable in the eighteenth century), first increases, then decreases slowly. But in a more general sense, one should also include negentropy or information, according to the well known equivalence due to Szilard and L’eon Brillouin. A tentative analysis is made of the evolution of the thermodynamical information in such industrial firms. Present limitations are described, and examples of possible applications of these new concepts of thermodynamics.