Field grand challenge for thermal engineering

Abstract

According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary (Merriam-Webster, 2022), the word “thermal” means relating to or caused by heat or by changes in temperature, or being or involving a state of matter dependent upon temperature; the word “engineering”means the application of science and mathematics by which the properties of matter and the sources of energy in nature are made useful to people through the design, manufacture, and use of complex products. Therefore, thermal engineering deals with the transport and utilization of thermal energy (often referred to as heat in daily language) in the design, manufacture, and use of products. In thermodynamics (Cengel and MA, 2006), thermal energy represents the energy stored or contained within a system (or matter) in a microscopically disorganized manner, while heat denotes the energy transfer between systems in a microscopically disorganized manner. Since systems can be chosen in an arbitrary manner suitable for analysis for different analysts, in daily language thermal energy and heat are often mixed in an interchangeable fashion. Heat or heat transfer can occur through a medium or in vacuum. It can occur through a medium with or without macroscopically observable motion, commonly referred to as convection and conduction, respectively. Thermal radiation can propagate most efficiently in vaccum, but it is also possible through a medium that might be solid or gas. Further, heat can be transferred, with or without chemical reaction during the transfer process, into or from other forms of energy, such as chemical, mechanical, electrical, and so on. Therefore, thermal engineering is multi-disciplinary, involving fluid flow, heat and mass transfer, chemical reaction, and properties of the medium through which heat transfer occurs. The quantity and direction of heat transfer are governed by thermodynamics. The first law of thermodynamics states that the energy can be transferred or transformed into another form of energy, but the total quantity of energy remains the same (i.e., conserved), while the second law of thermodynamics dictates the direction of heat transfer from a higher temperature system (or region) to a lower temperature one, and the quality of energy is degraded during the energy transformation process. The degraded energy (often referred to as waste energy, commonly in the form of heat) is dumped into our environment, causing environmental damage if the resilient limit of the environment is exceeded. The impact on the environment arising from waste energy dumping can exhibit in many different forms, such as local and global environmental changes like OPEN ACCESS