Is Gaia becoming Thanatia, a resource exhausted planet? For how long can our high-tech society be sustained in the light of declining mineral ore grades, heavy dependence on un-recycled critical metals and accelerated material dispersion? These are all root causes of future disruptions that need to be addressed today.
This book presents a cradle-to-cradle view of the Earth's abiotic resources through a novel and rigorous approach based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics: heat dissipates and materials deteriorate and disperse. Quality is irreversibly lost. This allows for the assessment of such depletion and can be used to estimate the year where production of the main mineral commodities could reach its zenith. By postulating Thanatia, one acquires a sense of destiny and a concern for a unified global management of the planet's abiotic resource endowment.
The book covers the core aspects of geology, geochemistry, mining, metallurgy, economics, the environment, thermodynamics and thermochemistry. It is supported by comprehensive databases related to mineral resources, including detailed compositions of the Earth's layers, thermochemical properties of over 300 substances, historical energy and mineral resource inventories, energy consumption and environmental impacts in the mining and metallurgical sector and world recycling rates of commodities.
Sample Chapter(s)
Chapter 1: The Depletion of Non-Renewable Abiotic Resources (421 KB)
Errata(s)
Errata (100 KB)
Contents:
- The Threads: Minerals, Economy and Thermodynamics:
- The Depletion of Non-Renewable Abiotic Resources
- Economic versus Thermodynamic Accounting
- From Thermodynamics to Economics and Ecology
- Physical Geonomics: A Cradle-Grave-Cradle Approach for Mineral Depletion Assessment
- Over the Rainbow: From Nature to Industry:
- The Geochemistry of the Earth
- The Resources of the Earth
- An Introduction to Mining and Metallurgy
- Metallurgy of Key Minerals
- Down the Rainbow: From Grave to Cradle:
- Thermodynamics of Mineral Resources
- Thanatia and the Crepuscular Earth Model
- The Exergy of the Earth and Its Mineral Resources
- The Exergy Replacement Costs of Mineral Wealth
- The Exergy Evolution of Mineral Wealth
- Tying the Rainbows: Towards a Rational Management of Resources:
- Recycling Solutions
- The Challenge of Resource Depletion
- The Principles of Resource Efficiency
- Epilogue
Readership: Thermodynamicists, geologists, economists, policy makers, and mining, environmental and chemical engineers.
"This is an exhaustive treatment of the subject with numerous tables of the baseline date and discussions going from basic thermodynamics to economics and social sciences. It is an essential read for any scientist who is concerned with resource evaluation and how we can best manage these assets and continue to live on an Earth in which we appreciate the service provided by the resource and thus avoid Thanatia in defence of Gaia."
John Ludden
Executive Director, British Geological Survey
“'Thanatia' presents a refreshing way of analysing the run-down of our mineral inheritance … To serious students of the resource problem the numerous tables in 'Thanatia' are useful because they are thought-provoking as much as for the numerical data. 'Thanatia' is a big book, with a wealth of data and background material on the minerals industry, representing many years of intensive investigation and analysis.”
Jane H Hodgkinson & Frank D Stacey
CSIRO, Australia
Authors of The Earth as a Cradle for Life
“The unusual title of the book Thanatia (death in Greek) leads its readers to understand what sustainability really means and to quantify the problem of mineral depletion using both disciplines thermodynamics and economics. ”
Ph. Vieillard
Director of Research
C.N.R.S., Poitiers, France
Antonio Valero Capilla is Chair in Thermal Systems at University of Zaragoza (since 1986). His main contributions are in Thermoeconomics — General Theory of Exergy Saving, Diagnosis of Complex Energy Plants — and Exergoecology, applied to evaluate the Exergy of Resources of the Earth, including Physical Hydronomics which provides the physical and economic costs of water streams, and Physical Geonomics from which Thanatia is derived. He has authored over 200 publications in research journals, books and conference papers and has directed more than 30 PhD students. Prof Valero is Director General of CIRCE, the Research Centre for Energy Resources and Consumption composed of 200 researchers devoted to Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy Systems and Power Plants Optimisation. The Centre has participated in more than 50 European Union projects. He was formerly Spanish National Manager for the Energy R&D Plan and Spanish Representative at the European Commission for the 7th R&D Framework Programme in Energy. He is the winner of the ASME James Harry Potter Gold Medal Award'96 and is an ASME fellow.
Alicia Valero Delgado is currently head of the department of Industrial Ecology and Resource Efficiency at the Research Centre for Energy Resources and Consumption (CIRCE) and a lecturer at the University of Zaragoza in the Mechanical Engineering Department, a post she has occupied since 2007. Her more than ten years research activity has been focused on the exergy evaluation of the mineral endowment on Earth, for which she has received three international awards. She studied chemical engineering at the University of Zaragoza finishing her education at the Université Paul Sabatier in Toulouse and the TU Berlin. Shortly afterwards, she became a junior researcher at Siemens Power Generation in Berlin and a consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers (Madrid). She entered the Research Centre for Energy Resources and Consumption (CIRCE) in 2003 and finished her PhD in 2008 with a research stay at the British Geological Survey. In addition, she is the author or co-author of 30 publications in international journals and book chapters and over 50 international conference papers, all of which relate to the analysis and optimisation of energy and the use of raw materials.
