Talk:Energy quality

Re original research

the concept of energy quality is taken from H.T.Odum's book specifically p.251. Even though Odum goes to great length to explain the concept, I find his examples a little unclear and so I have tried to provide a clearer example. If this is objectionable I can replace it with Odum's actual words, and provide my example here in the discussion. Either way he did use the concept of energy quality, as do other peer-reviewed contemporary researchers. On this basis there should be an entry on energy quality. Please provide some reason as to why the article should be deleted, so that we can clear up the entry to be less biased (if it is unfairly so) or less original in content Sholto Maud 08:22, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

• I've subsequently found reference to energy quality in T.Ohta's book (ref in article) and in a book called 'rational mechanics', which I'll be making references to soon. Sholto Maud 10:51, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

• I'm an engineering student, and I'm not sure if it's a mistake or not, but the Table listing energy qualities in the Ohta and the Odum scales has something strange. In Ohta's scale, the first (Highest Quality) is listed as Electromagnetic. Second Last comes Photon. A photon is nothing but the particle representation of an Electromagnetic energy. I suggest that the photon entry be removed. However, I was confused whether this article was a historical entry or meant to use up to date with modern physics, so I leave it up to your discretion. --Swift Arrow (talk) 08:55, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

• I think the article is largely historical because the topic doesn't seem to be relevant to current physics. Whether or not it could be relevant is moot. I read Ohta's as saying that Electromagnetic energy is like that in electrical power systems which power our computers, whereas photon is relevant but not the same. Sholto Maud (talk) 03:34, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Failed AFD

This article's AFD debate did not get consensus. Johnleemk | Talk 11:34, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Content for discussion

In the 1930's, S.Glasstone associated qualitative phenomena with electrochemistry. In particular Glasstone consdiered the electrochemical process of hydrolysis - in which a molecule is broken down by water - a qualitative phenomenon. But at the time of his writing Glasstone noted that "experimental methods [were] not sufficiently exact for the quantitative determinations.." (1937, p. 208). In this sense Glasstone was concerned to account for the qualitative aspects of direct energy transformations of electrochemical reactions with a quantitative scientific measuring instrument. It is noteworthy that Glasstone's text was first published in 1930, six years prior to the first year of production of National Technical Laboratories' 444 Model G Beckman Hydrogen potential (pH) meter. The commercial creation of this meter apparently began with a request from the citrus industry for an instrument that could accurately assess the acidity of soil. This request came about because it was known that the ripeness, and quality of citrus fruit are highly sensitive to soil and water acidity, and the industry sought an instrumental method for quality standardisation. The acidity or alkalinity of various compounds like soil, may be interpreted in terms of complete dissociation to free ions with possible hydrolysis of the dissolved ions. The pH meter was therefore involved in the quantitative measure of what S.Glasstone had considered a qualitative phenomenon. Subsequent developments were concerned to greater specify the roles of different energy forms of energy in the qualitative aspects of direct energy transformations, but also indirect energy transformations involved in making a product or service.

Energy monism Is there only one system of reference for energy quality as employed in Systems Ecology? Put another way we might ask, is there one most useful system of reference? This is tantamount to asking about our commitment to the philosophy of monism. H.T.Odum appeared to believe that one system was a more useful system of reference than any other in the geobiosphere, and that was the mechanism of photosynthesis - the lungs of the planet. In this way H.T.Odum gave the mechanism of photosynthesis a central location in the quantitative definition of energy quality, whereby the solar joule takes the position of unity in the emergy accounting scheme. H.T.Odum related other energy qualities back to the solar joule thereby finding the energy quality factor of any particular form of energy.

Not sure if the above is crackpot. Sholto Maud 23:46, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

What I'm going to try to do with this stuff

After eyeballing a few papers from online, it seems that exergy is 100% non-protoscience and I think I even remember being taught something like it a few years back in advanced undergrad or intro grad ChemE. The concept is over 100 years old, so I'm adding rigor to the exergy page now and removing some of the oddness. The next step will be emergy and then this page. In the meantime, I suggest renaming this thing transformity because "quality" is an ambiguous pseudosciency term that just assumes everyone is speaking about ecocentric quality when they say quality, and that's an NPOV thing to assume. There's plenty of people out there who would chop down 200 acres of virgin rainforest for 50 cents worth of 12 carat gold and call it a quality energy improvement. But you can bet they won't call it a tragic decrease in emergy. Or increase in transforminininity. Or whatever. I'm not that far yet. A side-benefit is I'm starting to actually enjoy ChemE again. Anyway, I'm proposing moving this article to transformity and redirecting energy quality to transformity...and doing a major rewrite to remove the oddness and give a clear-cut plan to the internet world to save us all from the impending doom of the deemergence. I think I'll be able to understand this stuff and wrastle with it until it makes enough sense for a lot of other people to make money off it. What do you think, Sholto? Will I get a cut? Flying Jazz 17:31, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

There seems to be a good reason to keep 'transformity' distinct from 'energy quality'. This is because there is discussion of 'energy quality' in the 'non-transformity' engineering literature. Others suggested that many sites about the emergy & transformity terminology was confusing and preffered it on the one site - which is why I put them together. There are differences in the ratios that people use to talk about energy quality - for example Ohta's discussion seems to be different, but related, to Odum's. Ohta does not refer to transformity. Because of this difference I think it would be better to keep the discussion of transformity on the Emergy page... If you can figure out how to get a cut let me know. :) Sholto Maud 23:39, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Good call. I realized when I started delving into exergy that you're definitely right about keeping transformity separate from energy quality and redirecting transformity to emergy was a good thing too. I'm removing the move tag and I put the transformity redirect back to emergy. Flying Jazz 21:55, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

"Qualia"

A search for "energy quality" + "qualia" on Google returns only six results, of which one is the Wikipedia article and three others which are mirrors. The remaining two results seem unrelated to the usage in this article. As best I can determine, the term "qualia" has never before been used in relation to energy quality, prior to being used in this article in that way. A quick look at qualia shows that the topic of that article is also unrelated to this usage. As such, I am de-linking those terms but am leaving the words themselves in place. If you really think that the term is not only appropriate but also is so relevant that it needs to be wikilinked, please provide references to support this usage. --Sapphic 20:34, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

• • 1. If it is innapropriate to use the word "qualia" to describe the term "energy quality", then the word "qualia" should be removed along with the wikilink.
  • 2. If is is not innapropriate to use the word "qualia" to describe the term "energy quality", then a link should be maintained because it is,

"an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us".

• • 3.1 Is your argument that this is an innapropriate use of the word? Term "x" can never be used "in relation" to term "y", if "X" has never before been used in relation to "y"?

Sholto Maud 04:48, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I left the words in place because although I don't think it's an appropriate usage, I think de-linking is enough. The term "qualia" has a technical meaning in philosophy of mind, and its only connection to the topic of this article (as best I can surmise) is that a person might experience different qualia depending on the quality of the energy they're perceiving. But the same thing can be said about any number things, and qualia play no special role here. You might as well wikilink to eyes because people use them to see energy. So unless there's some established history of using the term qualia in this way, it's at best confusing. Also, without some sort of references, there certainly isn't any establishment of a significant relationship between the two topics that would warrant a wikilink. --Sapphic 19:29, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not convinced. I think the weight of your argument is such that we can remove the word "qualia" from the article without loss of clarity or accuracy.

As to the philosophy of Mind: Peter W. Ross (Qualia and the Senses, The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 51, No. 205. (Oct., 2001), pp. 495-511) says, "Intentionalism claims that colour experiences are representational states which have no qualitative properties apart from the physical properties of physical objects which they represent." Hence even in intentionalism physical properties have qualitative properties. My reading is that it is these qualitative properties that are referred to in the energy quality article, on the understanding that physical properties have energetic properties, and as physical properties, energetic properties have qualitative properties. But perhaps the article should mention the philosophy of mind more explicitly? Sholto Maud 23:06, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

NPOV

I added the NPOV tag because significant criticisms of the concept of energy quality and the entire field that produced it are not reported in the article. See Talk:Emergy#Neutrality. Flying Jazz (talk) 17:18, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

entropy and energy quality

I find it remarkable that as of the beginning of 2.1.'08, the first use of the word entropy occurs in the reference section. It would seem that thermodynamics has little or no relevance to the concept of energy quality. This is astonishing. Comments from others on this extreme oddity? ww (talk) 20:43, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Also, the difference between exergy and energy quality must be explained better. I thought these terms were almost synonymous. Mårten Berglund (talk) 17:09, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree. I think the academic community interested in the topic may have dropped the ball. There would need to be a verifiable peer reviewed article (or book) published on this before it could be treated properly, with citations, in the article. Perhaps this already exists but I'm not aware of it. Else there appears to be an opportunity here for physicists to clarify in the literature. Sholto Maud (talk) 03:37, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Dubious

I expected to find only physics and engineering content in this article (e.g. references to Carnot machines, theoretical and practical numbers for energy conversion efficiency, relation to the second law of thermodynamics, etc.). That is, limited to energy in the physics sense.

Not ecological systems, postmodernism, spirituality, and astrology.

I also find the following statement dubious:

"Heat, a form of energy, is partly potential energy and partly kinetic energy"

I don't think this is the normal meaning of potential energy and kinetic energy (macroscopic) - even if individual elementary particles have kinetic energy, etc.

--Mortense (talk) 13:32, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

You need to read what Axel Kleidon is writing. (Use search engine for details) Its very thermodynamics and physics oriented, and feeds 100% of it's energetic output into ecology. Basically, the sun powers everything: water evaporates, rain erodes rocks (chemistry), providing raw nutrients to plants, animals eat plants. See energy flow (ecology). Its all solar energy, in the end. 67.198.37.16 (talk) 19:49, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Deletion and Combined cycle power plant

It seems that there is some discussion of deletion for this page. I voted for KEEP, but even so, it might need some fixing. As well as I know, energy quality is most often discussed in the case of conservation of energy and heat engines, where heat is a lower quality energy form. It would be interesting to mention Combined cycle power plant where, in the usual case, two heat engines are used to extract more energy from a heat source. Gah4 (talk) 01:11, 16 November 2020 (UTC)