Ohta
According to Ohta (1994, pp. 90–91) the ranking and scientific analysis of energy quality was first proposed in 1851 by William Thomson under the concept of "availability". This concept was continued in Germany by Z. Rant, who developed it under the title, "die Exergie" (the exergy). It was later continued and standardised in Japan. Exergy analysis now forms a common part of many industrial and ecological energy analyses. For example, I.Dincer and Y.A. Cengel (2001, p. 132) state that energy forms of different qualities are now commonly dealt with in steam power engineering industry. Here the "quality index" is the relation of exergy to the energy content (Ibid.). However energy engineers were aware that the notion of heat quality involved the notion of value - for example A. Thumann wrote, "The essential quality of heat is not the amount but rather its 'value'" (1984, p. 113) - which brings into play the question of teleology and wider, or ecological-scale goal functions. In an ecological context S.E. Jorgensen and G.Bendoricchio say that exergy is used as a goal function in ecological models, and expresses energy "with a built-in measure of quality like energy" (2001, p. 392).
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