ABSTRACT

Maximum Entropy Production(MEP) Principles In recent years the idea that a nonequilibrium system develops so as to maximize its entropy production (the MEP principle) has began to attract increasing attention as a potentially powerful way to predict how a complex open system will tend to evolve. Interest in the environmental sphere was originally sparked by the work of Paltridge [34] and the recent revival is partly due to the work of Roderick(C.) Dewar[35] using a general Jaynesian approach. Following the recent review of entropy production principles by Martyushev and Seleznev [36] we distinguish MEP in the nonequilibrium thermodynamics context from MEP in nonequilibrium statistical mechanics. In thermodynamics the entropy of the system (or subsystem) S is a state function like the internal Energy U, and these must satisfy the fi rst and second laws of thermodynamics, dUWQ += δδ and QTdS δ≥ , respectively, where T is the temperature, Qδ is the net heat (in whatever form) entering the system (or subsystem) and Wδ the work done by the system or subsystem on the outside world (or other subsystems.) If the subsystem is a small volume element and local thermal equilibrium is assumed then equality can be assumed in the second law, but globally entropy increases due to heat fl ows described by generalized thermodynamic fl uxes and forces. The authors of [36] base their discussion of nonequilibrium thermodynamics on a principle due to Ziegler and argue that this is suffi ciently general that it covers both linear Onsager and Prigogine minimum entropy production principle, and linear and nonlinear maximum entropy production principles, reconciling then by their different interpretations.